


Be not defeated by the rain

by hereticalvision



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: hd_smoochfest, HP: EWE, Japan, M/M, Slash, Yakuza
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-10
Updated: 2011-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 06:07:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hereticalvision/pseuds/hereticalvision
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exiled from both Britain and the magical world, Draco Malfoy makes a living by identifying illegal magical artefacts on behalf of the Yakuza in Kyoto.  He's almost put his past behind him when Head Auror Potter shows up in Japan chasing a Celtic relic, and Draco's life is once again thrown into utter turmoil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be not defeated by the rain

**Author's Note:**

> EWE. For those who don't know, the Yakuza is the Japanese Mafia so there are a some references to strong off-screen violence including self-mutilation, a lot of swearing and some (broken) Japanese. The fic also features tattoos, cigarettes, angry sex, poetry, ruthlessly rewritten mythology and an entire country's worth of OCs.

  
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](http://s573.photobucket.com/albums/ss178/hereticalvision/Be%20not%20defeated/?action=view&current=japany3.png)   
Banner by artemis_sparks   


Kyoto, Ryokan Minami: Headquarters of the Yama Yakuza family

"Jingai! Father is ready for you."

Draco Malfoy put out his cigarette slowly. He looked up from where he sat sprawled on the tatami mat floor, eyed Sadahiro and curled his lip. "Don't call me Jingai, little brother."

Sadahiro shrugged. "Didn't mean nothing by it. The older brothers all call you that."

Sadahiro wasn't a bad kid but a Yakuza's reputation was all he had and Draco's position was precarious enough that he could afford to take no chances. Draco looked him full in the face, letting years of being a Malfoy, being a Slytherin, being the best, fill his expression with contempt. Sadahiro's face crumpled slightly. "Yeah," Draco acknowledged, narrowing his eyes, "they do. But you're not my older brother, now, are you Sada-chan?"

Sadahiro bit his lip at the slight and bowed his head. "No. Sorry, older brother."

Draco nodded, and rose from the floor in a swift movement that had Sadahiro stepping back; it never hurt to remind them how quick he was. Boss Oyabun might find Draco useful but it was a constant struggle to keep his place in the jostling ranks of the Yakuza, and the way the others spoke to him didn't help. They called each other _asshole_ and _motherfucker_ but Draco they called _homo_ , _cock sucker_ and of course _jingai_ , over and over again. Of all the things you are, Draco, the most despicable of all is that you're a _foreigner_.

Draco would accept it over _Death Eater Scum_ any day.

Sadahiro led him through the corridors of the inn the family had adopted as a base. Full of natural wood, antiques and creaking floors, it was virtually impossible to navigate silently, which made it safe; you'd hear your enemy coming. It had taken Draco a long time to get used to the feeling of being horribly exposed every day he lived in the Muggle world – no wards, no disillusionment charms. Not even a _wand_ , and Merlin, but that still stung, still ate away at Draco's soul.

The elevator clunked and creaked but it was easier than climbing to the fourth floor. The inside was mirrored and Draco watched Sadahiro's reflection type in the code to access the Boss's room.

Sadahiro's hair was dyed that odd orange-brown Japanese youths seemed to favour. He wore oversized clothes with Disney characters all over them. Draco had never understood why the city's self-proclaimed bad ass gangsters would affect such a style until Yoshida, the _wakagashira_ , had said to him simply, "You think we should look like criminals?"

The man made a good point.

It didn't mean that Draco was going to start dressing like that, though. Today his arms were on display, the Celtic knot tattoos interlacing over the wiry muscles all the way down the right arm, all the way around the Dark Mark on the left. He liked black and wore his clothes tight, sheathing his whole body like a dagger. Black suits for business meetings, black jeans for everyday. Just a hint of kohl at the eyes. The effect was to accentuate how pale his hair was, how grey his eyes: it was a _fuck you_. I am different. I am Jingai, I am Shugenja, I am Queer. I am not like you.

Boss Oyabun was sitting at his desk when Draco entered the room. An old, balding man with the unfortunate Japanese tendency to bad teeth, he had an almost endearingly comical appearance. He was extremely kind to his wife and daughters. He indulged his boys when they did well. He had once cut a man's balls off and sewn them into his mouth before sending him back to his family. He had done it with his own hands.

But he smiled at Draco now. Draco nodded back. "You sent for me, Father?"

It was just a title. The fact that it was in another language didn't stop the twinge of betrayal.

Oyabun nodded. "Dragon! Yes, yes, yes, come in. We've made an impromptu acquisition, given as a gift at the _miai_ today. It looks _fascinating_!" He beckoned Draco over to a corner table, on which a fairly large crate sat. Yoshida stood behind it next to Sugawara, the second lieutenant. At Oyabun's desk, surrounded by papers, sat Iitaka. Head of administration, Iitaka was the man who ensured that the legal face hid the criminal activity.

Draco's nerves tingled. All four men at the top of the family were here, now, in this room. They had regular meetings of course, but hardly ever all four of them at once – it was too big a security risk. Usually they would only get together to avert a crisis. But here they all were, and Oyabun was smiling.

Whatever was going on here had to be very, very important.

Yoshida and Sugawara nodded at Draco. Yoshida was usually polite, while Sugawara liked to insult and spark banter; today neither spoke except to make the formal request:

"Shugenja-sensei," Yoshida said, naming Draco as master of magic as he bowed at a much deeper angle than he ever otherwise would to anyone but Oyabun. "Please educate us."

Draco bowed in return and stepped forward.

The tingle in his nerves intensified. He frowned and took another step.

Draco could still feel magic in objects which had been charmed or altered in some way. Sometimes he even performed accidental magic, which was the main reason the other families feared him. But for the most part all he felt of magic was the continual thrum in his blood.

Oyabun liked to collect obscure magical artefacts that had somehow found their way out into the Muggle world. Draco would look at them and identify them, simple as that. In exchange he was fed, paid, and accepted as part of the family. And though the glimpses at the world he should have belonged to by right were sometimes agonising, the thought of life as nothing more than a Muggle was outright unbearable.

For the most part the artefacts were banal things: Remembralls, wizard currency, odd pieces of Quidditch equipment. Every once in a while there was something more. The Foe-glass was the pride of Oyabun's collection. A Pensieve had been sold for fifty million yen.

This though-

Draco looked down at his forearms now. The knots were moving. _Moving_. Another small step and the Dark Mark began to writhe.

Draco blinked, shook his head to clear it. When he looked again the motion had stopped.

He placed his fingers on the table to steady himself as Yoshida and Sugawara pulled the top from the crate. Draco reached towards it slowly, wary now. The usual thrum beneath his skin was increasing in both volume and pitch, becoming a screech.

Then his skin made contact with the metal.

Images screamed into Draco's mind. Water, silver, beating hearts. Knives, tattoos, death. Gubraithian Fire, crumbling bones. Pain and horror and birth and life and all of it, all of it bound together in endless tangled knots.

Draco smashed into the table, head-first.

When he came back around he had been placed on the couch. Sugawara was shaking him urgently. "Jingai! Jingai!"

Draco batted his hand away. "Don't call me Jingai, you prick."

Sugawara laughed a little, and when Draco opened his eyes, Yoshida was standing, smiling his wintry smile of relief. Sugawara, who was closer, almost in his face, grinned at him. "Jingai, what the fuck? You fainting now like a pussy-boy?"

Draco raised long fingers to his forehead. "The only reason you didn't pass out is you're too damned stupid to feel the power in that thing."

Yoshida tilted his head to one side. "So it's real."

Draco swallowed and nodded. "I don't know what that thing is, and I don't want to. But if you've been told it's just about the most powerful magical artefact in the world, I would believe it."

Yoshida looked to his left; following his gaze, Draco saw Oyabun. He seemed lit from the inside with some alien, bestial happiness. Draco had never seen that expression on his face before.

Draco had been comfortable in the Yakuza for more than ten years. But looking now at Oyabun's face, Draco felt a kind of unease he thought he had left behind in Britain, buried alongside a defeated Dark Lord, a dead friend, and the fantasy of a hero with green eyes allowing him to be forgiven.

***

Three uneventful days passed. Uneventful except for the buzzing in Draco's head, that is. It was as though his awareness of magic had been dulled by time, and now that it was absent Draco _craved_ it with all his being. When he had been a real wizard, living every day with a wand in his hand and the crackle of wards all around him, he would never have had such an intense reaction to anything, no matter if he stood in front of the source of all magic itself.

That's what he told himself.

He hadn't even managed to look at the thing in the crate - it had been obscured by the packing material. But his skin crawled at the thought of something like that being sold off for Muggle money.

Lying on his back on his futon at night, Draco forced himself not to think of the screech of magic, the flashing images. He tried to ignore the way the magic called out to him, the way his blood had started singing.

He knew it would go away again eventually and that was worst of all.

Draco slept fitfully that night, just as he had on the three nights before. Dreams of Celtic knots entangling him, pulling him down like Devil's Snare. Pansy calling out for him when the hippogriff had gone for his arm. The way Potter's hand had felt in his when the bastard saved his life. The Fiendfyre.

Draco woke virtually leaping off his futon.

"Older brother!"

It took a moment for the world to come back into focus. Sadahiro was at the door; he had turned the light on, and was staring now at Draco, naked but for the shorts he slept in.

"Older brother?" Sadahiro repeated, less certain this time.

Draco shook himself. "What is it, Sada? It must be—"

"It's three in the morning, older brother, but Father needs you at once. We have a very important visitor and you have to be at the meeting."

Draco rubbed at his head, trying to make sense of the turn this was taking, in the middle of the damn night, too.

"Father's meeting him now?"

Sadahiro checked his watch. "In forty-five minutes!"

Draco swore. "Get me coffee!" he snapped at Sadahiro. "I'll be at the car in five."

"Yes, older brother," Sadahiro said, bowing as he left.

Draco scrambled to the bathroom to clean his teeth and straighten his hair. He hadn't taken the kohl off properly before going to bed and it was still there but there was no time to worry about that when he had to pull on his suit for an important visitor. Black shirt, black suit, black shoes, it all had to be perfect and between that and a doomed attempt to straighten his sleep-ruffled hair he was lucky to make it down to the car in time. Sadahiro had managed to find a vending machine selling cans of hot black coffee and Draco gulped it down gratefully as they headed to the ryokan, rain pounding against the roof of the sleek limousine.

Sugawara was waiting at the genkan. "You're almost fucking late, Dragon," he said as Draco slid his shoes off. Draco's eyebrows shot up at once. _Dragon_ was technically his name now, but Sugawara never called him that.

"What's going on that's so important?" Draco asked as Sugawara led him to the meeting room.

"Visit from the chief of police," Sugawara said curtly.

Draco sneered. "He goes drinking with Oyabun every Tuesday. Why are we-"

"He's coming with a visitor. A very, very important visitor."

"Who, the Emperor?"

Sugawara glared, stopping dead to round on Draco. His eyes were stone cold. "Don't ever fucking joke about the Imperial family."

Draco lowered his eyes. "I apologise, older brother."

Sugawara nodded and started walking again. "Someone like you," he said. "That's who's coming. Shugenja."

 _A wizard!_ Draco couldn't help the twin emotions which surged within him – longing at the thought of being in the presence of magic again, terror at the certainty that he knew why the wizard was here and what they would want. That artefact. Were they here to buy it?

"Japanese?" Draco wanted to know.

"Foreigner," was all Sugawara had time to say before they were hustling into the 6-tatami mat meeting room.

By the sliding paper door a girl in a colourful kimono sat ready to serve. Opposite the door with their backs to the wall, ten _kyodai_ knelt in a line, each in a black kimono with the family crest on the collar. A banner depicting it full-size hung behind them. In front of them, at the table, Oyabun sat with Yoshida to his right and two empty spaces to his left; Sugawara bowed and dropped himself into one.

"Dragon! You're just in time," Oyabun beamed.

Draco bowed. "I am glad to be of service, Father."

"A dignitary has come to visit and since he is Shugenja and a foreigner, I thought it good to have you here to lend your expertise!"

Draco nodded. "Will I be acting as translator?" His English was rusty. He wrote to his mother every week but he hardly ever spoke English aloud any more. All he spoke these days was this bastardised Yakuza Japanese which marked him as outside any other kind of life, even here.

"Back up, not primary," Yoshida said. "The Shugenja has some kind of spell that will allow us to speak."

"Very well," Draco said and took his seat next to Sugawara. "When do we expect him?"

The tone of a doorbell pulsed through the air.

"Now," Oyabun said with a grin.

The girl stood, sliding the paper door closed behind her. Draco heard her feet in their _tabi_ pad along the floor as she made for the door.

Draco heard Sadahiro let the guests in, talking a little. The girl introduced herself, and asked the guests to remove their shoes.

Draco cast a glance to his right. Sugawara was wound up, Yoshida was cool as always, Oyabun was grinning. Draco himself had no idea what to feel except excitement at the prospective presence of magic.

The door slid open. The police chief walked in first – they all knew him. Then a Japanese man, presumably from their Ministry. And then the special guest.

Draco should have known, really.

Standing there in red Auror robes, hair as messy and glasses as crooked as always, was Harry fucking Potter.

***

The last time Draco Malfoy saw Harry Potter, it was the day he'd been forced to leave Britain. His whole family had been tried for their support of the Dark Lord: his father went to Azkaban and Draco was waiting to see what would happen to his mother, then finally him.

Mother clasped his shoulder. She was always so proud – but not like Father, who wore his pride for all to see. Mother's pride went right through to her centre. She would never be bowed, never be beaten except through her own choice for the good of someone she loved.

She was beaten then.

"Please," Mother said, eyes streaming. "Please don't send him away. Please don't do this."

Weasley had looked at her with pity. That was what Draco remembered. Ron fucking Weasley looking at his beautiful, proud mother with _pity_. "I'm sorry, Mrs Malfoy," he said. "But the judgement's already been passed."

Hundreds of thousands of galleons in bribes over the years, that's what the Wizengamot had cost Draco's father. And in the end it hadn't made any difference.

"It'll be all right, Mother," Draco said, determined to retain what dignity he had. He turned away and looked Weasley full in the face. "The Portkey, if you please."

Weasley nodded. "Where have you decided to go? We need to set the co-ordinates."

Draco hadn't thought about it. He hadn't truly believed this moment would arrive. He sneered, always his first defence, and looked down at the list of countries who'd agreed to take Britain's exiles. "Japan, I suppose. It's about as far away from this place as one can get and that sounds good to me."

Embarrassed, Weasley went a little red, but he indicated to the witch next to him that the destination had been chosen. He looked at Draco speculatively.

"Harry spoke up for you, you know," Weasley said.

"Did he," Draco said flatly.

Weasley snorted, his face shutting down. "Never any talking to you, was there Malfoy? Here's the Portkey."

Draco smirked as sardonically as he could and reached out for it. A Japanese symbol; how appropriate. "Thanks."

"Malfoy…" Weasley said. He swallowed, his expression softer once again. "I'm sorry, but – your wand."

Draco looked down at the wand in his hand. He'd only had it back for a week, the owl bringing it without so much as a note attached. It barely worked for him any more anyway, he told himself. Potter had won everything from him in one insignificant moment. Draco thought for a moment about attacking, about forcing them to kill him. But no. He would not be cowed. He would not be broken, even by this. He would find his own way in the world and he would thrive.

He forced his hand to move, placing his wand on the desk that stood between him and Weasley. He dropped it, unable to look away as the witch who had spelled his Portkey picked it up and without a moment's hesitation snapped it in half.

Draco flinched at the sound; he heard his mother give a small, stifled cry. He forced himself not to show his feelings. "How long till the Portkey activates?"

"Ten minutes," Weasley said, his tone full of something that might have been regret.

"Very well," Draco said, and walked back to his trunk. The Aurors had searched it for spare wands, magical paraphernalia, contraband of any kind. Then they had given him a pamphlet on adjusting to life without magic. Draco could have killed them.

He sat with his mother, waiting for the time to pass. She held his hand tightly.

"Your Father will not be in prison forever," she said.

Draco had long since ceased believing that Father could fix everything. "I know, Mother."

She reached out to hold him and he let her, softening for just a moment before pulling away. "I'll write. You can visit. I'll be fine."

"How will you survive in the Muggle world?" she said, trying to keep her voice low. They had been over this.

"I'll manage," Draco replied.

"You don't even speak Japanese – what are you thinking?" she asked. "At least in France-"

"It's a fresh start," he cut her off. Neither said anything more.

"It's time," came a voice. One of the Aurors who had testified against him. Draco's jaw tightened, but he stood, let go of his mother and prepared himself.

"I love you, Draco," Mother said.

Draco swallowed, trying not to let himself lose his self-control, not now in these final moments here. "I love you, too," he replied.

He turned blindly, unable to look at her another moment. In the last second before the Portkey tugged him away from everything he had ever known, Draco had looked up to see Harry Potter stepping into the room for what could only be the sole purpose of watching him in his moment of despair.

Draco had raised his chin and looked at Potter, and hated him.

 

***

Now, Draco forced himself not to react to Potter's presence. His eyes had instinctively gone to Potter's face before he looked away – Potter hadn't been looking at him but he couldn't possibly fail to notice Draco for long, his white-blond hair so obvious in the sea of Japanese black.

Draco instinctively raised his chin, forcing himself not to flinch, and looked into Potter's face.

He hadn't changed much. Still a scar-faced speccy git, though he looked older now. His face had taken on a certain hardness, much like that which Draco saw in the family's lieutenants.

Potter hadn't looked his way yet, his focus all on Oyabun. Draco began to feel that familiar fury Potter had so often brought out – the impotent rage at being beneath notice.

The three guests stood. The man Draco didn't know placed something onto the table – it was blue and glowed. Draco could feel the magic immediately, but while he assumed it was a translation charm of some kind, his senses had been so dulled that it could be anything. No one reacted, however, so Draco had to assume this had been pre-agreed.

As etiquette demanded, the four Yakuza representatives stood. Everyone bowed – Potter a little awkwardly.

"Greetings, Yamanouchi-san," said police chief Miyoshi. "Thank you for welcoming us. May I present Nagai Yuki-san, of the Magical Diet," the man bowed deeply, "and _Ha-lee Pot-tah_ -san," his tongue made mincemeat of the unfamiliar syllables as Harry bowed again, "head of British Magical Law Enforcement."

"We are honoured to meet with such prestigious guests, Miyoshi-san." Oyabun shuffled into the pose Yakuza use for introduction – right arm out, palm towards his chest, the left behind his back as he bowed forward just slightly. "Hear me! I am Kyoto's Oyabun, head of the Yama family. From now on recognise my name."

Yoshida's turn. "Hear me! I am Kyoto's Yoshida-yama, first lieutenant to the Yama family. From now on recognise my name."

Sugawara got into position as Draco's blood pounded through his veins. Potter still hadn't seen him, how could he not have seen him - _Merlin_ , the fury was searing.

"Second lieutenant to the Yama family," Sugawara was saying and Draco thought he might be sick. Potter was across the room, Potter and the man Nagai, but their magic filled the air, drugging him. The magic and the hatred blurred together, rising in Draco's throat until he was afraid he would choke.

Silence fell. Draco realised that he had missed his cue. Everyone was looking at him.

He forced himself to shake his hair from his eyes in feigned unconcern even as his arms automatically went into the correct positions and he bowed, keeping his eyes on Nagai. He had taken the Dark Mark from a half-mad murderer. This was nothing.

"Hear me!" he said, forcing as much theatricality as he could muster into his manner. "I am Kyoto's Dragon-yama, special assistant to the Yama family. From now on recognise my name!"

He finished with more force than was strictly polite and looked up, straight into Potter's face.

Potter's jaw had gone slack. Disbelief was all over his face; he looked as though he had almost taken a half-step towards Draco. Green eyes raked over his face, his hair, his body, as though Potter was trying to tell himself it wasn't true.

Looking at Draco wasn't likely to help him out on that score.

Nagai frowned slightly and gently touched Potter's elbow. He started, but recovered himself faster than Draco would have anticipated. "Thank you. Please favour me."

Sugawara's mouth curled sardonically at the formality, but Oyabun seemed to rather enjoy it.

Everyone sat, cross-legged on the floor. Draco wondered if Oyabun had chosen this room rather than one in the Western style on purpose, to keep their guest just out of his comfort zone.

Draco could have told him that it hadn't worked; Potter was too busy looking at Draco to notice.

 

***

 

The meeting had not been as excruciating as Draco might have expected. After his initial shock he'd taken a certain delight in watching Potter, who had not known how to react to his presence at all. Draco had taken pains to speak only in Japanese and only to Oyabun, pointedly showing Potter where his loyalties lay.

Nagai and the police chief had behaved exactly as Draco expected; they had politely informed the Yakuza that something important was missing, and might have come to this area, and that its recovery was very important. Nagai was made of steel – he had been polite but not at all obsequious. There was a hint of threat beneath his niceties and Draco was inclined to believe he would be able to make good on those threats.

After the meeting they had all gone back to HQ to discuss the meeting.

"An interesting man, that foreigner," Oyabun mused. "Seems completely harmless, but he can't be, surely?"

It was Yoshida who asked the question he'd dreaded. "Do you know that _Pot-tah_ man, Dragon?"

Draco licked his lips. "Everyone in Britain's heard of him," he said. "He's the best." If that came out bitter, only Yoshida looked at him thoughtfully.

The others had exchanged glances and Draco had been shut out of the rest of the discussion, much to his chagrin. They still hadn't bothered to tell him what this thing was – it hadn't been mentioned _once_.

His unease had only grown and he was exhausted from being woken and having to sit while Potter stared at him. Oh, it had amused him, the shock and confusion on his face, but Draco had seen it harden and known that there would be consequences.

He got back to his apartment at 6am and fell asleep at once.

 

***

 

Draco hadn't been called in the next day. When the pounding at the door began, he was relaxing, smoking while he listened to a little music and occasionally sipped the Firewhisky Oyabun obtained for him – a guaranteed antidote to any horrendous reminder of a past best left buried.

Then the knocking had begun, fierce and insistent. Draco's immediate reaction had been to leap up and reach for the leather jacket on the wall which contained in one pocket the emergency escape route and in the other the gun Yoshida had given him. Any of the Yama family would have let themselves in politely, any civilian would simply ring the doorbell, so it was inevitable that Draco's first thought was that a rival faction had come to kill him over some imagined slight.

Potter's idiot voice calling out, "Malfoy? I want to talk to you, Malfoy!" was something of a relief, though almost immediately the relief gave way to anger and frustration. Draco raked his fingers through his hair and turned off the iPod he'd been listening to, leaving his cigarette still burning in the ashtray. He almost took the gun with him before he remembered and tucked it back into the jacket which he hung casually in the hallway.

 _Thump thump thump_. "Malfoy?" _Thump thump thump_. "Malfoy!"

"What!" Draco spat as he flung the door open.

Potter hadn't come in his Auror robes, which was something. He was dressed in Muggle clothes, presumably to make getting around easier. Draco lived well into Muggle Kyoto and the only wizards he'd ever seen here wore kimono rather than robes, glaring at him if he looked too long.

Harry's eyes, forest-green and intense, looked Draco up and down. Draco was wearing black jeans and a black sleeveless shirt as he always did on these days, and if it had been anyone but Potter looking at him this way, Draco would have thought they were eyeing him up. "Can I come in?" was all Potter said.

Draco's lip curled. " _Dōzō,_ " he said, pulling the door open with one hand and making a sweeping invitation with his other. He had more or less expected that Potter would show up eventually, though this was certainly sooner than anticipated.

Potter brushed past him and made to step out of the _genkan_ right in onto the tatami; Draco held out an arm to block his way. "Shoes off inside, Potter, did you bother to learn nothing about the customs here?" The English sounded strange in his throat – the _L_ too clean, the vowels indistinct.

What he'd said had hit the mark, however; Potter flushed. The entryway was small and he was closer than Draco would have liked; he could see every eyelash, every detail of the famous scar. He backed off as Potter bent to remove his shoes, clumsy about it in the way only foreigners were. Draco made an impatient noise and brushed past him, returning through the door beyond.

Draco was lucky; his apartment was large by Kyoto standards. Three whole rooms he had to himself. Entire families lived in less in some parts of the city. He trudged into the back room now, his den. There was a low table on which Draco liked to place his drinks and ashtrays while he leaned against the back wall to read or listen to music; he flopped down into his habitual position as Potter entered the room after him. Draco didn't speak, busy finishing his cigarette while Potter looked around, taking in the cheap furniture, the mat floors, the bare white walls.

 _If he compliments me on my apartment,_ Draco thought, _I will kill him._

"This place is a hole, Malfoy," Potter said flatly.

Draco's jaw dropped.

"Certainly not somewhere I'd expect to find you," Potter went on, his lip curling.

"I'm curious, Potter, where exactly _would_ you expect me to go after being exiled and Mugglified?" Draco spat. Potter had always got under his skin and the flare of outrage rose just as surely as it ever had. "We can't all rise to Head Auror in ten short years after all. Or did I get that wrong?"

"You got it right." Potter looked at him the way Draco imagined he'd perfected on his suspects. "I suppose you being here does fit after all. From one set of criminals to another."

Draco made a scoffing sound in the back of his throat. "No, no, no, Potter, the Death Eaters were many things. Political extremists, racist thugs, a blight on society by all means, but nothing so prosaic as _criminals_." The words were coming faster now, his long-rusting vocabulary returning to his tongue, anger all the incentive required.

"For fuck's sake, Malfoy!" Potter's stern face broke into a snarl and Draco felt something stirring within him. _Magic._ Accidental magic could be triggered by all kinds of things – in Potter it seemed to be anger. Draco felt every fibre of his being cry out for it even as Potter demanded, "Are you actually defending them?"

"Defending them?" Draco licked his lips, feeling the air in the room change texture all around him. "I'm pointing out that you're downplaying their villainy. If anything _I_ am laying praise on _your_ cause."

Potter glared, the force of his gaze shifting from Draco's left eye to his right and back again. Draco wondered if this was how he looked at suspects, if that was the way he had stared down the last of the Death Eaters and made them cower. To be the focus of all that searching intensity… It made Draco shudder.

"Do you think," Potter asked, low and dangerous, "I haven't heard word games like this before? Do you think you can tie me in logical knots when I've been an Auror for ten years and my best friend in school was Hermione?"

Draco scoffed. " _She_ might give me trouble in a battle of wits, Potter, but luckily my only opponent here is _you_."

They'd somehow moved closer without Draco noticing; he'd gone from sitting slumped at his little table to right up in Potter's face, all the better for screaming at him.

"You're still the same," Potter snarled. "Still vile and cowardly and pathetic." Potter's fury had his hard face flushing, the magic crackling from him like electricity on a Tesla coil.

"And you still can't help reacting to me," Draco pointed out, a smirk playing on his lips, leaning in to get closer to the power charging through Potter's veins. Draco's nerves were screaming; Potter's colour was high, his hands were clenched into fists and he was breathing hard. Draco damn near swayed from feeling the pull of magic, the pull of power, the pull towards Potter that he had always, always felt and forced himself to deny. Potter's green eyes and hard body were only inches away from Draco's own and he wanted – Draco wanted –

Draco smashed his body against Potter's, thought deserting him. He was running on pure instinct now, furious with Potter for having everything he wanted, for _being_ everything that Draco was so desperate to be. In one motion, Draco had pressed himself flush against Potter from knees to chest, his hands going into that god-awful hair and twisting as Draco assaulted Potter's mouth with his own.

Potter made a surprised noise in the back of his throat. His hands went to Draco's shoulders, trying to push him away but Draco was not to be dislodged. He ground his hips into Potter's and held on tight to his hair. He bit at Potter's lips, forcing his tongue into Potter's mouth, chasing his flavour. Draco knew this game, he'd played it before: Potter wanted him but hadn't quite made the leap. Draco dragged his mouth away from Potter's own and opened his eyes to watch Potter strain towards him, to have his mouth back even as his body warred with itself.

Draco gave a triumphant laugh. "Don't tell me this isn't why you came," he ground out into Potter's collarbone as he bit his way from shoulder to throat. Licking his way up that throat, feeling Potter shudder, his hands tightening again in Potter's hair, Draco pressed his hips forward again, feeling Potter's cock beginning to harden. He laughed open-mouthed against Potter's throat, curling his tongue under his earlobe before whispering, "Your body knows the truth."

There was a moment where Draco thought Potter was going to deny it, regain his control and shove him away. But then with a snarl Potter lunged for Draco as though he could possibly pull him any closer than he was already pressing himself. Hands went into Draco's hair, yanking his head around so that their mouths met. This time Potter took control of the kiss, licking at Draco's lips, tongue pushing its way past them as soon as they parted for Draco to meet with the tip of his own. Wet, messy, utterly without finesse, the kiss nonetheless made everything more intense, made everything unbearable. Draco clutched at Potter and Potter shoved at Draco and spit was going all over Draco's chin and he didn't _care_ , he just yanked harder at Potter's skin as though he could climb inside it and have the world at his fingertips.

They crashed to the floor abruptly, Potter landing on top, his cock hard against Draco's stomach. Draco blindly stretched up for Potter's mouth again but couldn't reach it; instead he sank his teeth into the underside of Potter's jaw, Potter's mouth gasping heavy and ragged an inch from his ear. Draco bit down harder and Potter grunted, his hips giving an involuntary jerk. Draco felt that triumphant laugh come again, causing his chest to shake. Potter slid down and covered Draco's mouth with his own once more; Draco arched as their groins came into contact and let out a groan at the incredible power of Potter's hard cock so close to his own. Potter reached up to yank off his glasses and throw them away – there was a clatter as they slid across the floor, landing who-knew-where. Draco's hands found the top of Potter's shirt and tore at it, the need to feel bare skin overriding his ability to remove clothing. He only managed to get it part way open before Potter was slapping his hands away to take over. In mere moments Potter had removed his own shirt and opened his trousers, shoving them and his underwear down before settling back between Draco's legs.

Draco heard himself keen in frustration, reaching down to yank at the buttons on his own fly, the backs of his hands encountering the hard planes of Potter's stomach as he fumbled to open them. Potter was arched over him, giving him just enough room to move but not helping him. He was distracted by pulling open Draco's shirt, finding that the tattoo he had seen only on the lower arms came all the way up, over the shoulders and down the chest. As he opened more and more buttons he revealed more and more of the tattoo and bent to trace the route of the elaborate knots with his tongue. Draco shuddered again and finally yanked his trousers open, managing to free his cock before pulling Potter up to meet his mouth again.

Potter kept shifting his weight, preventing Draco from finding a rhythm and just when Draco was ready to scream at him to stop it, he felt Potter line up their cocks and thrust. Draco groaned, arching up and Potter took advantage of his momentary distraction to grab Draco's wrists and pin them to the tatami beneath their bodies.

Draco had never fucked without a futon between his body and the mats, and the texture was surprisingly rough where Potter held his wrists pinned down, his skin dragging over the flooring again and again as Potter frotted against him. He felt the chafe against his forearms and wrists, against his buttocks naked against the floor and focused on that rather than the pressure of Potter's weight bearing down on him, the way Potter shifted against him, their cocks grinding together. There was no lubrication, it was rough and clumsy and Potter's mouth was doing more biting than kissing. It was rutting in its purest form. Draco could do nothing but lie there with his shoved-down jeans keeping his legs pinned together and let Potter ride him.

"Fuck," he gasped out, pulling his mouth away from Potter's, "fuck, fuck, fuck…" It was a chant and it couldn't stop any more than Draco could push Potter away. This between them, whatever else it might be, was inexorable as river flowing to sea, unstoppable as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. Draco turned his head, squeezed his eyes closed, clenched his fists so tight that his nails dug deep into his palms as he tried to hang on, riding the pleasure, damned if he'd come before Potter did.

Potter's forehead came down to rest against Draco's temple, his breath hot on Draco's cheek. He didn't speak, just panted in Draco's ear as he thrust again and again and Draco jerked his hips as best he could to meet him until at last it was too much and Draco reared up, biting down hard into Potter's collarbone as he came all over both of them. There was barely time to be embarrassed before Potter was following with a shout, pushed over the edge by the flood of wet heat and adding to it, all the way up Draco's stomach and onto his shirt, opened over his chest but never removed.

They lay there for several long moments in stunned silence, Potter still gasping into Draco's ear, Draco lying with Potter's weight pinning him to the floor.

Draco waited until he'd caught his breath then shoved hard, knocking Potter off him. Potter grunted as he collapsed to the floor on his back; Draco wondered if he'd been winded.

Draco lay there reviewing the damage done. He had come all over his stomach, he no doubt had bruises forming on his backside and his wrists, and he had just got off with _Harry Potter._

Too bad he wasn't in touch with any of his old friends; Pansy and Blaise would have _screamed_ to hear this one.

Draco stood up and walked to the bathroom on legs that still shook a little, reaching for a cheap onsen towel to clean himself up with. Potter could have cast a cleaning charm on him. The thought made Draco hate him all over again.

When he walked back to the other room, Potter had his glasses and clothes all back in perfect order and must have done exactly that; Draco could feel the magic singing in the air. He clenched his fist again, dimly registering that it hurt more than it should have. Apparently he'd done quite a number on his hand while riding out his orgasm.

"Er," Potter said, interrupting his thoughts.

Draco threw his cum rag into the bin and tucked himself in, doing his trousers up again. He steeled himself the way he'd done so many times before in so many different contexts. When he raised his head, it was the Malfoy mask Potter would see.

"As articulate after sex as before, I see," Draco drawled. He stepped past Potter to the table, reaching for his Mild Sevens with a hand that did not shake. His lighter was a Zippo, a present from Sugawara who did not seem to understand that 'foreign' did not automatically mean 'American'. Draco carefully didn't look back at Potter, but could picture the expression on his face perfectly.

"Malfoy," Potter said and Draco gave a huff of laughter around his cigarette. "Malfoy, do you know why I'm here?"

"I was at the meeting," Draco said neutrally.

"It's not just any artefact that's gone missing, Draco," Potter said, leaning forward earnestly. "It's really serious."

"Why, what is it?" Draco said, smirking to himself. "Time-turner? Some new-fangled Unspeakable invention?"

"No," Potter said evenly. "It's the _Coire_ of the Dagda."

Draco's body stilled at once. "That's a myth," he said flatly, punctuating the sentence with a long, hard draw on the cigarette. He was trying desperately to appear nonchalant, but his mind was racing. If it was true…

Draco raised his head to find that Potter was just looking at him with that infernal honest, straightforward gaze. "A myth," Potter repeated. "Like the Deathly Hallows?"

Draco looked away, remembering Potter and the Dark Lord taunting each other about the Elder Wand.

"It turned up in a dig in Ireland" Potter went on when Draco didn't speak. "At first we weren't sure, and by the time we'd identified it and realised it should be under heavy guard, someone had beaten us to it." Draco could _feel_ Potter looking at him, awaiting some sort of response. His voice was gentler when he began, "You must know how dangerous…"

"Shut up," Draco cut him off, unable to bear a speech. "Shut up, it isn't my problem."

Potter was on his feet and right up in Draco's face in an instant. "Yes it is!" Potter said, "it's everyone's problem. Draco…"

"'Draco'?" Draco mimicked viciously. "Don't flatter yourself we're on those terms."

" _Draco_ ," Potter insisted, placing his hands on Draco's upper arms, watching Draco jerk at the contact, "if they sell this thing to the wrong person, if word gets out - we'll be looking at the war all over again. Maybe even worse."

Draco looked at Potter. Stupid Potter with his stupid hair and dorky glasses, who'd saved his life and left him to rot in it and who had, after all, saved the world that time. It struck him then how terribly surreal all of this was: Potter showing up in Japan at all, never mind tracking down Draco's apartment, bursting through the door and tearing off his clothes. And after all that, talking to him with the same earnest naïveté in his voice Draco had overheard him using with his idiot followers in Dumbledore's sodding Army back in fifth year.

Draco shook himself, dislodging Potter's hands. His fingers trembled but he brought the cigarette to his mouth anyway; Potter batted it away.

"Draco, are you listening to me?"

Draco looked at him, feeling his eyes wide and his face open. Potter just stared back, desperately trying to reach him.

"What do you want from me?" Draco said, suddenly tired as he had not been since that endless aching year with Voldemort in his family home.

"I want you to help me," said Potter. "I could see you didn't know about the cauldron from the way you reacted, but you'd know where to start better than me. We've got to find it!" Draco swallowed, almost convinced. "I've got to get it back to the Ministry."

At that Draco snorted, all of his anger, all of his resentment flooding back at once. He shoved Potter away violently, reaching down to scoop up his cigarette from the floor. "Damn it, Potter, you made me burn a hole in the mat. Those things are expensive."

"Draco!"

"Potter!" Draco sneered back. "What did you think? You were going to come here and it was going to turn into some odd couple _terebi_ programme?"

Potter looked confused. "Terebi – you mean TV?"

"Great," Draco spat, reaching to light another cigarette. "Even the words I thought were English are just _wasai-eigo_."

"Draco, what is the _matter_ with you?" Potter's temper was flaring again. "You did the right thing in the end last time, I thought-"

"And what did it get me?" Draco demanded. Anger lurched through his blood and without another thought he threw the ashtray at Potter, who dodged; it hit the back wall and smashed.

Potter looked at him in disbelief but Draco didn't care. "You didn't have anything to lose but your friends and they were all marked for death anyway. You punished me for doing what my family had taught me my whole life, for caring that my parents and my friends might die. That's what happened to me. It took me ten years to build this life for myself and I'm supposed to, what? Use all my friends and betray the family so you can make some arrests and go home a hero?"

Potter's jaw tightened. "Is that all it ever is, Malfoy? What's in it for you?"

Draco sneered again. There was something so natural about sneering at Potter. Potter who hated Draco so much for no better reason than his own inability to empathise with anyone who didn't share his point of view. "What else?" Draco spat.

Draco told himself he was relieved when Potter stormed out of his apartment.

 

***

 

As the emotional turmoil that Potter always seemed to leave in his wake slowly ebbed, Draco lit his hundredth or so cigarette of the day and tried to remember the story of the _Coire_.

Grandfather Malfoy had liked to tell him those sorts of stories. Stories about the first wizards, long before even the Founders. Beings born of pure magic.

"The Muggles thought they were gods," Grandfather would laugh. Draco remembered him, colder even than Father, harder to please, but with a lot more time to spend with Draco, teaching him. And when Draco managed to live up to his expectations – oh, those moments were always glorious.

The story was simple: the first wizards were the Tuatha Dé Danann. Each created a magical item of unsurpassed power: the Stone of Fál empowered kings; the Spear of Lug guaranteed victory in battle; the Sword of Núadu defeated all opponents. The Dadga, the Father of all, made a cauldron, the first cauldron ever made by magical hands.

When the Dadga's son was killed in battle, the Dagda placed his body into the cauldron. He filled the cauldron with the purest water in the kingdom and mixed it with three drops of his own blood. He conjured Gubraithian Fire and boiled the contents of the cauldron over it until at length his son emerged, alive again.

It was a myth. Just a myth. The old stories were literally filled with tales of Death being cheated – this was just a story, no different. It couldn't be.

It couldn't be, Draco told himself again, taking another deep pull on his cigarette, trying his best to ignore the cold creeping through his veins.

 

***

 

When morning came, Draco groggily swallowed gulp after gulp of black coffee to chase the demons away. One thing he missed most was having the house elves make the coffee for him; he'd never been any good in the mornings without it.

His dreams had been fragmented and confusing, Oyabun placing him into a cauldron to save his life and him finding Potter inside it, all teeth and tongue tearing at his skin. Draco shook his head, trying to chase the images away. He gritted his teeth and looked at himself in the mirror.

Malfoys do not flinch from doing what we must, he told himself. _We don't try to change the world anymore_ , his father's words from Azkaban. We have to live in it. We have to survive.

Whatever Potter might say, the fact was he was working for the people who sent Draco here with nothing but a handful of Muggle money, a trunk full of reminders of a life denied him, and pig-headed pride preventing him asking anyone for help. If he hadn't happened to meet Yoshida…

He owed the Yakuza a lot, was the point. Sure, they mocked him but that was just how they were. They didn't save the worst of their bile for him. They might call him _jingai_ but they closed ranks if anyone else gave him a hard time – which for the most part, they didn't. He got called _homo_ , sure, but when the boss took them to a brothel after a successful venture, Draco would be told which love hotel _his_ reward would be in. Draco shifted a little awkwardly at those memories. All Japanese boys have black hair after all and if Draco liked to fuck them from behind and imagine, well, who did it hurt?

Draco wiped his mouth. Potter. Years of an unsettled feeling in his stomach, some horrible blend of lust and hatred flashing through him every time he so much as _thought_ of his old schoolmate. And then a tongue tracing his tattoo, bruises on his wrists. Maybe…

 _Maybe what?_ the voice that had kept him alive jeered. He's not your knight in shining Auror robes and he's not here to sweep you off your feet!

No, Draco had to acknowledge, Potter hadn't come here expecting to find Draco. He was here for the cauldron.

But his presence still meant that Draco had a choice. If the Yama family had the cauldron, and it seemed pretty bloody certain that they did, then he could barter it for a way back to Britain. He'd see his mother again for longer than the five days once a year permitted by the Ministry. He could visit his father still rotting in prison.

Yes, but no one spat at him in the street in Muggle Japan. Here he'd learned to use the one useful skill he'd still had and build a career. And exactly how much leverage would he need, to demand that Potter get him back into Britain _and_ get magic?

It would have to be both. He couldn't stay in Japan if the Yakuza wanted to hunt him down, he'd never be safe. And if he went back to Britain, still with no Muggle qualifications, no magic, no friends?

Besides. Despite what Potter seemed to think, Draco didn't betray his friends. He never had. He might have grown afraid of Crabbe in their last year of school but he'd never turned on him. He might have worked out he was gay when he was fifteen, but he still looked after Pansy as best he could while the world crumbled around them. He'd never betrayed someone who truly cared for him, truly trusted him. It mattered to him that he hadn't.

Was he supposed to throw away the life he'd spent a decade building, the last of the good things he thought about himself, all for hope of impressing Potter?

Thoughts of visiting his mother, walking down Diagon Alley, waking up to find Potter tangled up around him – all were ruthlessly crushed. It wasn't going to happen, and Draco wasn't going to waste time wishing for it.

Draco looked at himself in the mirror for a long moment. Then he picked up his phone.

"Get me the boss," he said curtly.

 

***

 

"Dragon!" Oyabun said with a smile. Draco had been told to meet him at the local _onsen_ , where he now sat in a large, steaming bath big enough for six, perched on a ledge which kept his upper body out of the steaming water and allowed him to smoke a cigar. There was no one in with him today, though from time to time business would be conducted at the baths. Today only a few bodyguards stood around, Yoshida watching the door.

"A magical buyer would give you more," Draco said with no preamble.

Oyabun and Yoshida exchanged a glance.

Draco forced himself to go on. "I know that it's not a world I know a great deal about, not in this country at least, but the currency here is gold just like it is in Britain. If you could find a good enough way to secure it, a magical buyer would give you a fortune for whatever was in that crate." Draco was not stupid enough to so much as suggest that he might know what was in there – that was a one way ticket to a line of questioning he really couldn't work out how to answer.

Oyabun frowned. "You never worried about this kind of thing before, Dragon."

"You never came across anything like this before," Draco retorted. Oyabun's frown deepened; Draco quickly tacked on a semi-respectful, "Father," to the end of the sentence. He licked his lips. "Whatever we've got, it's important enough that the Head Auror of Britain came thousands of miles just to speak with us in person. That means either he's doing the rounds with everybody, trying to shake it loose, or he knows we have it. In the first case, someone will figure out we have it sooner or later. In the latter, maybe we can work out a deal with him."

"And why," Oyabun said tartly, "would I want to bother with that?"

Draco swallowed. "I've told you a lot of what shugenja can do, Father, but Potter's one of the strongest there's ever been. He defeated one of the most powerful wizards of all time and that was ten years ago. By now, he might be able to read minds, erase memories – he might take this thing from us before we can make a deal and leave us with no memory of even having it!" He could feel himself becoming more and more frantic as he spoke, leaning further and further towards Oyabun, his tone growing sharper with every word. "There's no telling what he could do to us and you need to take that seriously!"

It should have been no surprise when Oyabun's eyes flicked to Yoshida's and Draco found himself hauled backwards and dumped face first on the floor. He lay there stunned, Yoshida's foot in the small of his back.

"You will not disrespect Father, little brother," Yoshida snapped. Draco had never feared Yoshida, so cold and logical, and for the first time he considered that he may have made a mistake. Yoshida wouldn't get angry like Sugawara. He'd stay perfectly calm as he tore apart whomever Oyabun had pointed him at and he wouldn't hesitate, no matter who it was.

Draco's limbs stung where they had hit hard stone floor but without looking up he quickly rearranged himself into the formal bow of apology as best he could with Yoshida keeping him down. "I would never intentionally insult Father or question his will!" Draco cried. "But I fear that we underestimate this opponent! I am concerned only for the family and for the safety of my Father!"

"Let him up," Oyabun said, shifting himself in the water.

Draco felt Yoshida's weight shift. Slowly he raised himself to kneeling and met Oyabun's eyes.

Oyabun looked at him, sharp and intense as though he himself had Legilimency and Draco found himself occluding quite instinctively.

 _I mean it,_ he thought fiercely. _I just want to stay here and be safe._

Oyabun nodded slowly, whatever he saw in Draco's face apparently satisfying him. "All right, Dragon," he said, jovial manner gone. This was the man who'd murdered dozens of rival Yakuza and barely blinked. "You meant no offence. But you should have known that your Father would have a plan for your family. You should have trusted him."

Lucius flashed before Draco's eyes, desperate and broken as the Dark Lord took his wand. "Yes, Father," he forced himself to say.

Oyabun's mouth pinched in displeasure. "I give you a lot of leeway, Dragon. You serve your purpose and you amuse me, but the benefits far outweigh what I ask of you. Paramount within the family is respect. You know this, Dragon."

"Yes, Father," Draco said again, this time with an edge of fear in his voice. He'd seen the results of Oyabun's displeasure before and he'd _never_ wanted it directed at him.

Oyabun held up his left hand. "Have you heard of _yubitsume_ , Dragon?"

Draco had; he began to shake a little. "Yes, Father."

Oyabun toyed with the pinkie finger of his left hand, before pulling off the prosthetic he always wore to reveal the stump beneath. "I was always a good boy to my Father," Oyabun mused. "Always. But I got into a bar fight. I killed _katagi_ ," he said, using the word for non-Yakuza. Civilians. "Father was furious. It sullies all our good names, he said to me. And he did not even have to ask me. I reached at once for my knife and I cut off my little finger right here," Oyabun wriggled what was left of the stump. "I gave it to him. I knew it was my fault and I should make amends."

Draco slumped back into the formal bow immediately. "Yes, Father."

"Yoshida," Oyabun said and his voice was deathly cold. "Give him your knife."

 

***

 

"Draco, I… What happened to your hand?" Potter demanded. He'd appeared out of what Draco assumed was a Disillusionment charm the moment Draco had stepped into his apartment and at once noticed Draco's left hand where his small finger was bandaged.

"It's nothing," Draco said at once. "What are you, stalking me now?" At least he'd remembered to take his shoes off this time; Draco wondered where he'd hidden them.

"Surveillance," Potter said as though Draco was stupid for feeling surprised. "Let me see it – I can heal it for you!"

"No!" Draco yanked his arm away from Potter. "If you do that then the family will know I spoke to you – or to a wizard, anyway."

Potter's face scrunched itself into something ferocious. "They did this to you?" His tone was deadly.

"Of course not."

"You used to be a much better liar, Malfoy," Potter said, reaching out.

"It's the truth!" Draco jerked away again. "They didn't hurt me." It was his own fault. He knew better than to talk to Father that way and he never would have made such a clumsy mistake if it wasn't for Potter, bursting into his life and sending his head spinning.

"Let me get you to your room at least," Potter offered, taking Draco's elbow.

Draco had had enough. "I don't need your help!" he spat. "I'm not an invalid, I'm not a charity case and I don't need you messing up my life! You're going to find the cauldron and go back to Britain and I'm going to stay here and have to keep living."

Potter's mouth twisted. "You want me to help you, is that it?"

Draco hissed from between his teeth. He could see on Potter's face that he'd been waiting for this, that he'd thought it was only a matter of time before Draco agreed to help him – for a price. Potter didn't know him at all. "I want," Draco said at last, "to show you something."

He led Potter into his bedroom. If he'd had a western-style bed that might have felt like a come on, but as he only had a rolled-up futon in the corner it could have been any room at all. This was the only room in the apartment with anything on the walls: a banner written in beautiful Japanese calligraphy. White paper with black ink angular across it, all in katakana.

Draco saw Potter looking at it while he fished out the box. "What does it say?" he asked.

"It's a poem," Draco said shortly. He shoved the box at Potter's chest. "Open it."

There were only two items inside. Potter pulled them out and looked inquisitively at Draco.

"That's what your precious Ministry gave me," Draco said. "That's what they gave me to start a new life. Nothing but a pamphlet telling me that typical Mugglewear is a nightgown and Wellington boots and that Portkey. Can you read it, Potter?" Draco asked, feeling a vicious smile begin to curl his face. "Can you?"

Potter shook his head, eyes on Draco's.

Draco half-smirked, half-grimaced. "It's the character for 'demon'."

Draco watched Potter flinch from that. He often wondered if taunts had been official policy or if it had been a personal message from the girl at the desk that day. He hadn't known her, but that didn't mean she might not have held some grudge against his family. Anyone could have; many did.

"Maybe she didn't know…" Potter began, but it must have sounded weak, even to him.

"Oh, right, Potter. I'm sure that was just a coincidence," Draco snarled. "The only reason I know it wasn't Weasley is because it didn't say 'ferret'."

"Ron felt sorry for you in the end!" Potter shot back.

Draco's mouth twisted. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

They stared at one another, too close again. Potter smelled like the rain. Draco wondered wildly whether he had gone around any of the tourist sites today, if he'd seen the Golden Pavilion or walked through the hundreds of red shrine gates making the path through Fushimi Inari. He imagined being Potter's tour guide, laughing at his inability to use chopsticks and feeding him octopus dumplings.

"I can ease the pain," Potter said finally, his voice soft. "I don't have to heal it to ease the pain. I've got a potion right here."

"All right," Draco said, his voice just as quiet. He sighed and settled himself on the floor as Potter rifled through the pockets of his robe and crouched down to hand him a phial.

Draco swallowed it gratefully. It felt wonderful. The pain in his hand immediately ceased, as did all the minor pains he still felt: the stinging in his raw wrists, the slight headache from the tension of the day. Draco rested his back against the wall, tipping his head backwards and sighed with the relief of it all.

When he opened his eyes, Potter was staring at his throat. Draco suddenly felt self-conscious and straightened up, handing the phial back.

"I used to think of you," Potter blurted out suddenly. Draco froze. "After you were gone, after you were sent away. I used to think about you and I wondered where you were. If you liked Japan, if you'd managed to work out how to live. I didn't think it was right, what they did."

"I survived," Draco said, trying for carelessness in his tone. "Didn't think of you much." That was just not true at all, but much better that Potter didn't know that. "I sort of assumed your life would go a certain way, I suppose."

"What – marry Ginny, have a parcel of children and be as conventional as possible?" Potter's mouth twisted. "Everyone thought that."

"So you didn't?" Draco had to know.

Potter glared at him then. "You think I'd have rubbed one out on you if I had?"

Draco covered his pleasure with a shrug. "Oyabun loves his wife and children. Really loves them, you can see it when he's with them, especially his daughter Rin. He's wrapped right around her finger – he wants her to marry, keeps holding _miai_ \- it's kind of like an interview for prospective husbands," he said at Potter's blank look. "She just flutters her eyelashes and he drops it." Draco shook his head, amused. "He loves them all like that. But he still goes to Gion and the hostess bars and sometimes takes all the lads to brothels."

"You go to brothels?" Potter asked, his expression somewhere between horror and fascination.

"Not recently," Draco replied, a wicked smirk crossing his face. "But then the brothers don't tend to like watching a man fuck another man."

It was almost comical how quickly the expression on Potter's face changed. Draco felt the leap of lust as though it were his own – and then, abruptly, it _was_ as he remembered the weight and heat of Potter pinning him to the floor, the firm pressure of his cock and the hot rush of cum. This was insane.

If Draco could trust himself, he could use this. He could get Potter to offer him anything. But instead he could too easily imagine himself reduced to begging, and that was something he could not accept.

"If you're done staring," he said sharply and Potter seemed to wake from a daydream of his own.

"I know the Yama family have the Cauldron, Draco," Potter said. "I know it and you know it. What I don't know is where they're keeping it, or who they're selling it to."

"I already told you I wasn't going to help you," said Draco.

Potter made a disgusted sound, and straightened, abruptly towering over Draco where he still sat on the floor. Draco watched him through his eyelashes for a moment as he rubbed a hand through his hair.

"How do they even know about any of this?" Potter said, and from his tone Draco honestly wasn't sure if Potter was talking to him or just to himself. "I get here, I confer with the Magical Diet and they tell me that if anyone's illegally moving magical items it's probably the Muggle Mafia. I ask about the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy and they mutter something about special circumstances and things not quite working the same way here as I might be used to. This country is mad!"

Draco gave a genuine laugh. "You really did not do the research before you came here, did you, Potter? This is what comes of spending all your time at school copying someone else's homework." Draco groped in his pocket until he found his cigarettes; Potter frowned in disapproval.

"What are you talking about?" he asked irritably.

Draco took a long drag and shrugged. "Never mind. Anyway, have you ever tried to tell the Japanese what to do? They're the most passive-resistant people on the planet. They'll just flat-out ignore you. Politely."

Potter snorted. "Yeah, that about fits. I asked for a task force of Aurors and they said they don't exactly have any!" Potter went on, evidently not quite finished complaining. Draco head came up at that but before he could say anything Potter was saying, "Then they take me to meet someone they think might be able to help, and there _you_ are looking like…" His voice trailed off. Draco waited but it didn't seem as though he was going to finish that sentence – and Draco was dying to know. Looking like what?

"I'll give you this much," Draco said when it had become clear that Potter was done talking. "They don't have the contacts to move it in the magical community. Not something like this, not unless they've got someone they've been keeping well under wraps. So it's probably Muggles."

Potter nodded. "I'll look into it." And then, as though it was killing him, "Thank you."

Draco smirked by way of response, and Potter looked away, his eyes landing again on Draco's injured hand. "Why won't you tell me what happened?"

Draco rested his face on his hand, smoke billowing from the cigarette still clutched between his fingers. "Because if I tell you I did it to myself you'll want more explanations and in the end I don’t think you'd get it anyway."

Potter hissed. "You did it to yourself?"

"Read up on the Yakuza sometime, why don't you," Draco said. "There are as many rituals here as there ever were at home." Decisively he stood, stubbing out his cigarette. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've a party to attend."

Potter shook his head. "I don't understand you at all," he said and then with a spin and a _crack_ he was gone leaving Draco feeling oddly empty.

 

***

 

Any given night of the week, huge crowds of people take sake and beer down by the Kamo river and drink on the low, cobbled riverbanks. The sun was just going down when Draco arrived, and some of the bolder drinkers were removing their shoes, dipping their feet into the water. Draco liked it because of the atmosphere and the eclectic mix of people – often students, lots of foreigners, a few Japanese families. So long as he kept his tattoos covered he could pretend to be nothing more than another tourist himself, passing through for a vacation from whatever life they chose to believe he might have had. In those moments he was a Draco he had never known, shorn of the Malfoy name, the history of his family and house, the expectations of everyone around him.

Draco had never been very good at talking to strangers; nonetheless sometimes people here would come up to him simply to exchange a few words. The tourists were usually American but every once in a while it would be a British accent that asked him where he was from and how long he'd been in Japan.

He'd fucked a British boy or two, of course. Morals are always lower on holiday. Foreign boys were usually popular with the locals but tended to become frustrated quickly with the nervousness of the Japanese over attracting attention. Draco looked around, wondering if this night would be one of those nights, if he could find a willing body to lose himself in, a way to banish Oyabun and the cauldron and above all the memory of the sounds Potter made when he came.

But he didn't want anyone else, now, did he? He just wanted Potter, again and again.

Mercifully any dwelling he might have done on that horrible realisation was cut short when his phone rang.

Sadahiro drew up in the car not ten minutes later. "Woah, Dragon!" he said. "Is it true? You really cut off your finger for Father?"

Wordlessly, Draco held up his hand.

"Fuck," Sadahiro said, impressed. "I didn't think people did shit like that anymore. That's probably why he's got me picking you up now even though he's at temple."

"Temple?" That was odd. The whole family went to temple twice a year to mark the festivals honouring the ancestors. Oyabun went with his wife and children on the anniversary of his father's death. But that was it, and none of those days was today.

"Yeah, wants me to take you to him there."

"Which temple?" There were only about a thousand or so to choose from here in the cultural capital of Japan.

"You'll see," Sadahiro grinned.

 

***

 

Kiyomizu Temple's grounds closed at sundown but Oyabun must have made some special arrangement. He was there with Yoshida looking over his shoulder, as usual, but the twenty or so oldest brothers were all there too. He walked down the steps from the tall stage which held the temple proper to join the family gathered around the Otowa waterfall, watching the three channels of sacred water fall into the pool below. A girl stood with a long-handled ladle, catching water from one of the streams and pouring it into cups.

"Dragon," Oyabun acknowledged. "I am glad you are here."

At Oyabun's signal, Yoshida stepped forward. "Dragon-Yama," he began, his voice taking on that theatrical tone used for formal announcements. "When I met you in prison all those years ago I marvelled at the things you told me of."

Draco closed his eyes briefly, remembering. He'd run out of money, been found without proper ID. He'd been thrown in a holding cell and the only person he'd been able to speak to was Yoshida, who spoke English well enough to understand some of Draco's stories of magic and death. He'd felt so reckless then. He'd thought it was the end of everything.

"I told Father of you and he was intrigued. He had always believed in the stories of the shugenja and he wanted to meet you, so I brought you to him. And for ten years you have served this family."

Draco opened his eyes to see Oyabun smiling. "Recently we have made a deal that will secure all our futures, forever. Dragon here has paved the way, though he may not have known it. And so tonight we honour him – a true brother of the Yama family."

The girl was bringing the cups around. Draco took his mutely, following the lead of those around him.

"We drink the water to bless our venture – then we will drink shochu to celebrate!" Oyabun declared. "Kampai!"

"Kampai!" the brothers chorused, drinking deep.

Draco tried to smile as he sipped from his own cup, but the water was like ice pouring down his throat. They had accepted him as a full member of the family after all these years but what would the cost turn out to be?

 

***

 

Much later, almost three in the morning, Draco sat in the back of the car again. Sadahiro never complained about the long hours he worked ferrying the older brothers around the city but Draco assumed it must wear on him.

"Sada?"

"Yes, Dragon-Yama?"

They were all doing that now. They were all addressing him with real respect.

"I want to ask a question, Sada, and it's a dangerous one."

Sadahiro didn't look at him, his eyes all for the road. "I think you could get away with anything tonight, Dragon-Yama."

A celebration in a bar, the night due to end heaven-knew where. All for him. Draco wished he had been able to enjoy it, but that aggressive joy on Oyabun's face, the way some victory was right around the corner…

"I know we've got this big deal coming up…"

"Right, yeah, the deal you put in motion. Pretty sweet!"

"Right," Draco said, smiling to belie the furious pounding of his heartbeat. "I keep thinking this Auror – the foreigner we met?"

"Oh, sure, that guy. Yeah?"

"I'm sure Father has a plan," Draco said at once. "But I worry that Potter might mess everything up."

Sadahiro laughed. "Oh, come on Dragon. You should have more faith in yourself – Father does!"

"Oh?" Remaining casual was becoming more and more difficult.

"Yeah. You know Kohei – runs around after Sugawara the way I have to run around after you?"

"Hey!" Draco said, recognising his cue.

Sadahiro laughed. "Yeah, well Kohei was at that meeting till long after I took you home. Heard them talking about the foreigner. Yoshida was all, 'I think Dragon told me about him before - he's the reason Dragon was exiled.'"

Draco flushed to remember the things he'd babbled out in those days in prison, strung out on adrenaline and fear; Yoshida had never mentioned them since but evidently he remembered just fine.

"So then Father says, 'Then there's no problem. Dragon knows which side he's on.' So you see, Dragon, Father knows he can depend on you."

Draco looked down at his left hand. It wasn't because I was rude, he realised. It was because Oyabun needed to be certain I was his man. Never mind the years I've been with the family, he needed to be absolutely certain that I would do what I was told.

"Yeah," he said when the silence had gone on too long. "Father can depend on me."

"It's all going to be fine, you'll see," Sadahiro went on, cheerfully oblivious. "Just one more day."

The words hit Draco like lead in the belly. Whatever he was going to do, he would have to decide, and soon.

 

***

 

Draco slumped into sleep still fully dressed that night, something he preferred to avoid if at all possible. The alcohol and the tension had worn him out, though, to the point where he hadn't even had time for his usual cigarette before sleeping.

When he woke, he was face-down on top of the blanket as well as the futon. At least his shoes were off, presumably in the genkan.

The first thing he saw as he pushed himself off the floor was Potter sprawled out with his back against the corner of the bedroom.

Draco swore in vicious Japanese. "For fuck's sake, Potter, Kyoto is the biggest tourist draw in the country. Do you really have nowhere better to be?"

"I'm really not here on holiday, you know," Potter retorted. "But I did have a chance to find out about the finger thing."

Draco waited, wondering what ignoble motives were to be ascribed him _this_ time.

"You did it for the same reason you got the Dark Mark," Potter burst out. "You did it for the sake of belonging to a group of people who only care about the ways they can use you."

In a second, Draco was on his feet. "Let me tell you something about those people who _don't care about me_ ," he snarled. "I met one of them in prison. I was found with no ID and mixed up in a drug deal. Yes, Potter," he said, taking in the look of disgust, "I took drugs. I was trying like hell to blot out the ferocious gap where my magic used to be plus the memory of my first week in Japan."

"Your first…"

"I told you that you should have done your research," Draco ranted. "Well I learned the hard way that I should have done mine. I bet it never even occurred to you to wonder why Japan would accept British war criminals into their border in the first place- ah, I see it didn't. So let me tell you the story: after the Muggle War sixty years ago, the wizarding population dwindled to virtually nothing. The concept of 'pureblood' went out of the window and the Magical Diet was forced to sanction more and more marriages across the wizard/Muggle divide. More Muggles in Japan know about us than anywhere else in the world – but even with that, wizarding numbers decreased."

Potter frowned. "Er, I'm not sure I see why…"

"Don't interrupt. On my arrival in Japan I was offered a marriage to a nice, respectable Japanese witch, with a promise of freedom from the Trace as soon as I obligingly produced a child."

"What?" Potter's jaw went slack. "That's monstrous!"

"That's filial piety and they're big on it here. Do your duty, they said. We can help you adjust, they said. Believe me, after I lived the consequences of turning it down there were many times I wished I'd accepted. They took my ID and the last few things I had and left me for the Muggle authorities."

"Why didn't you try to use magic?" Potter asked. "That's what I really don't understand – why didn't you ever just buy a wand? I know they didn't bind your magic so why not buy one illegally?"

Draco's jaw went slack. "You're Head Auror – you're really claiming you don't know?"

"Don't know what?"

Draco laughed, hollow and bitter. "You remember the Trace, that thing we all had on us when we were underage? Well right before I went into the room where they snapped my wand and called me a demon, I had something similar put on me by the Unspeakables. I was told that if I attempted to perform so much as a _Lumos_ then they'd find me wherever I was and I'd be in Azkaban before I could blink. So there's your answer, Potter. I couldn't use my magic, but they didn't bind it – they just left me so that I'd be forever tempted. Forever feel the buzz under my skin and be unable to use it."

"No, that's not…" Potter swallowed hard. "That was never sanctioned by Magical Law Enforcement."

"Well someone in the Ministry knew about it," Draco spat. "Must have seemed like the most delicious torture ever. And it was brilliant, Potter, I have to hand it to them. I couldn't bear it. So I took drugs and I fucked anyone who wanted me and then I landed in jail. Do you know much about Japanese prison, Potter?" he went on, stalking towards Potter now. "They make you kneel for half the day in silence and then sit on the floor for the rest of the day, also in silence. You can whisper to the other prisoners through the bars at night, that's it. So I started telling the guy in the next cell all these stories I didn't think he'd believe. He gets out, and five days later I'm out too and I'm being offered a job."

Potter shifted. "So they…"

"Oyabun said he'd give me a trial. They handed me a Hand of Glory, of all things. Asked me how to use it – so I showed them. And that was it. I was one of them – doing nothing but errands at first, but I made myself so useful I quickly got my own errand boy and the money kept stacking up. So I did it because they gave me a chance and I keep doing it because they have _earned_ my loyalty."

Potter didn't seem to know what to say.

"You want a parallel with the Dark Mark, try the tattoo," Draco said, plucking at the crumpled collar of his shirt. "It took hours, and they did it with bamboo needles. It was a one-way ticket to a life in the Yakuza and it will forever tell anyone who sees it exactly what I am."

Potter stood up slowly, crossing the room to stand right in front of Draco. He reached out to push up Draco's left sleeve. Draco tensed, but Potter met his eyes squarely and pulled the sleeve up as far as it would go, revealing the Dark Mark and the tattoos surrounding it. Draco looked at his ink-stained arm and the bandage on his finger. All his choices, all the mistakes he'd ever made were etched onto his body.

He waited for Potter to say something along those lines, but what he said was, "Can I see it? The whole tattoo?"

There was something undercurrent here that Draco didn't quite understand, some strange feeling as though the room itself were holding its breath. Without being certain why, except that it had something to do with the way Potter was looking at him, Draco nodded. Potter dropped his arm to allow Draco to unbutton his shirt with his right hand. Potter followed the movement from collar down as Draco revealed more and more of the knots which covered his chest. They all but concealed a thin, silvery scar which slashed from clavicle to ribs, another mistake written on Draco's body but this time not one of his own. Potter looked and did not flinch.

Draco slid the shirt over his shoulders and discarded it on the floor. On the left side of his lower rib cage, there was the family crest; on the right side in the same spot, the tattooist's signature. He turned around to let Potter take in the whole. The knots trailed from his upper arms over his shoulders but then they became mere background for a dragon, its body coiled through the knotwork, its face staring out from between Draco's shoulder blades.

Draco heard Potter rising, but didn't turn. As he came closer, the heat of his body radiated onto Draco's cool skin. A gentle touch caressed Draco's skin and he knew that Potter was tracing the curve of the dragon's wings. He shivered.

"They call you 'dragon'," Potter said, his voice not quite steady.

Draco made a soft noise, confirming it. It would be so easy to shatter this moment, to go back to spitting insults and hard truths at Potter, to put up the barriers that Draco used to keep the world at bay. Instead he merely shuddered again as Potter raised his other hand to Draco's skin, tracing the dragon on both sides now, touching Draco's back, his shoulders, his upper arms until Draco could stand it no longer and spun around to draw Potter into a fierce, hungry kiss.

 

***

 

Potter didn't even try to resist this time, responding immediately to Draco's touch, his hands curving around the shoulder blades they had stroked only moments before. Draco rested his left forearm on Potter's shoulder to keep his hand out of the way, the leverage bringing their bodies more fully together.

Potter made a desperate sound in the back of his throat before abruptly slamming Draco back against the wall. Draco heard a choked cry that must have been his own as Potter began mouthing his way down Draco's jaw, along his collarbones, over his chest.

"Shit," Draco hissed as Potter placed open-mouthed kisses on his stomach, sucking nips and wide bites that made Draco feel like smacking his head back against the wall, lost in the wet heat of Potter's mouth moving down, down, down.

Draco braced himself as Potter opened his trousers. He looked down, expecting to see Potter intent on his task but instead found green eyes gazing up at him, watching his face as his cock disappeared slowly into Potter's hot, wet mouth. Green eyes took in Draco's head flying back against the wall then jerking forward again to watch his cock disappear into that mouth over and over again. Harry Potter on his knees; Draco whimpered as Potter's eyes closed at last while he moaned around the cock in his mouth.

 _I could come on his face,_ Draco thought, and then, with a fresh burst of lust, _I could come on his_ glasses.

That thought was almost too much; with a cry Draco yanked Potter's head off his cock and shoved him down on the futon, throwing himself on top of him in an absolute reversal of the last time they had done this. Potter still had all his clothes on while Draco had only to kick his jeans and shorts away from around his ankles.

Slow it down, Draco told himself. Slow it down or you'll come too soon.

Potter looking at him with his pupils huge didn't exactly help, so Draco closed his eyes. His left hand was still too sensitive to be much help at pulling away Potter's clothes so Draco used the first two fingers to stroke Potter's jaw as he kissed him slowly, changing the pace, determined to make Potter come completely undone this time.

Potter's cock was already hard, jutting fierce and insistent against his body, but Draco took his time despite Potter's determined efforts to gain more friction. With his good hand he shoved Potter's upper body down flat against the futon and curled his tongue underneath Potter's jaw, flicking the tip of it over the lobe of his ear. Potter whimpered at that and finally relaxed into letting Draco explore as Potter had explored him. And Draco straddled Potter's legs, pulling him into a seated position as he pushed Potter's shirt away and saw _his_ scars for the first time. He didn't ask, choosing instead to mark them with his tongue, curling down and around Potter who gasped at every swipe of Draco's tongue.

"I want," Potter tried, but his voice didn't seem to be cooperating.

"Would you let me," Draco gasped into his skin. "Would you let me fuck you?"

Potter stilled at that and Draco cursed himself. So close to having his fantasy but he pushed too hard, ruined it and now Potter would never touch him again.

"Yes," Potter said suddenly and Draco felt something inside him tremble. Sweet Merlin, was this actually going to happen? But yes, it was – there was lust in Potter's eyes beneath the uncertainty and his hands were already going to remove the last of his clothes. Draco batted them away and opened Potter's trousers with his own, sliding his fingers inside the opening to curl around Potter's cock at once.

Potter gave an incoherent sound, pushing the trousers over his hips and away as Draco slid his hand back and forth, grip tightening infinitesimally with every stroke. He bent to press a kiss to Potter's hipbone before he yanked the last of the clothes all the way off Potter's body and threw them out of the way.

Potter still had his glasses on, Draco registered dimly. He had never thought he'd had a particular kink for them but in this moment it was just, "So sexy," he blurted without meaning to say it aloud.

Potter gave a noise that might have been assent as he turned on to his stomach, reaching for something in his discarded clothes. Draco looked at the planes of his back and couldn't resist using his tongue to trace a path from the dip just where the spine began all the way up to his neck.

When he peered past Potter's head, he saw a wand was clutched loosely between his fingers, lubricant emerging from the tip. "Did I distract you?" Draco whispered, laughing when Potter twisted to look at him incredulously.

And then without a word, Potter was sliding his hand through the lube and behind him, down his own body. He paused to run a slick hand over Draco's cock before he slowly slid a finger inside himself.

Draco rested his head on Potter's shoulder, unable to do anything but watch as Potter opened himself up.

"I'm going to fuck you," he heard himself say. "Stick my cock so deep inside you you'll feel it in your throat." Potter moaned; his fingers worked themselves inside with more vigour and Draco slid his leg over Potter's thigh. "And you'll love it, won't you?" Potter moaned again but suddenly that wasn't enough for Draco any more.

"Won't you?" he asked again, louder.

"Yes," Potter hissed, but Draco still needed something more. In one fluid movement he halted Potter's hand and waited for the body to twist round, the green eyes to find him and plead for release.

At last Potter withdrew his fingers and turned just enough so that Draco could meet his eyes.

"You'll love it when I fuck you," Draco whispered deliberately into Potter's face. "Won't you?"

Potter didn't answer. Instead he rolled onto his back and spread his legs, his cock so hard it was beginning to leak. "Fuck me," he said. "I'll love it."

A shudder ran right through Draco then and he lowered himself between those parted thighs easily, dragging his skin along the hard muscles of Potter's body. Potter's eyes were locked on Draco's even as he rolled his lower body up, allowing Draco better access. His hands slid over Draco's torso, tracing the tattoos as he had before though his gaze never wavered as Draco lined up their bodies, biting his lip to keep from crying out.

Potter was so _tight_ , Draco realised at once. So tight that the first gentle nudge with just the head of his cock wasn't enough, wasn't enough at all to breach the barrier. So Draco leaned forward, kissing Potter again, licking at the corner of his mouth until Potter slid his tongue out to meet him. Draco kissed him again and again, sliding his tongue against Potter's own for the pleasure of feeling him fist his hands into Draco's hair. As Potter relaxed into the kiss, he opened up and with another kiss to gentle him, Draco tightened his hands on Potter's shoulders and entered him.

Warm, tight, wonderful. So good around him. Draco felt Potter's muscles give to accommodate him. He pulled away from Potter's mouth to cry out and felt himself begin to thrust without his permission. It was exactly as he had known it would be somehow, the pleasure sharper than it had ever been, the desire building and building…

And then he opened his eyes to find Potter staring at him. Draco's rhythm stuttered a moment as the intensity of those eyes bored right through him. Potter wanted him, yes, but when their eyes met it wasn't the blurred look of lust from before that greeted him. It was something shocked and helpless, something that made Draco slow down unbidden for the sheer rush of delight whenever Potter jerked forward with a hoarse cry only to look up at him again when the pleasure peaked. Draco pressed into Potter with his eyes wide, feeling something inside him breaking free. It had _never_ been like this, never been this intense, this powerful and Draco had no defence against it at all. He could only telegraph his fearful joy to Potter and see it reflected, know that Potter could feel it too. It was there in the way his gaze never wavered as Draco pushed himself deeper and deeper inside Potter's body, groaning every time Potter's hips rose to meet him.

"I can't-" Potter choked out but that was all he could manage before the sounds he made turned totally incoherent. He lunged up to kiss Draco again before he came hot and fierce between their bodies and had to pull away as he panted to catch his breath. Draco had Potter's body clenching all around him, his breath hot on his face, his hands kneading his shoulders and abruptly the pleasure peaked. Draco was able at last to close his eyes and gasp out his pleasure. "Harry," he cried out, "Harry," over and over until with a rush of heat he was spent.

When he opened his eyes, Potter kissed him again, softly, and Draco knew instinctively that the thing that had broken free within him had also broken free inside of Potter.

 

***

 

Afterwards they lay together, still staring one another in the face. Draco kept waiting for it to turn awkward, self-conscious, but it didn't. Something had changed.

"You called me Harry," Potter pointed out eventually.

Draco shifted. "I suppose we _are_ on those terms," he admitted, his mouth curving into a smile as Harry reached forward to kiss him softly.

"I lied before," Draco said in a rush, and it was a measure of how far they'd come that Harry didn't withdraw immediately, instead waiting for him to explain. "I did think of you." It was difficult to admit even that much; it ran counter to every instinct Draco possessed.

Harry stroked his face. "I used to wish I'd get to see who you'd become."

Draco let go of the breath he'd been holding. "I always wished that I could show you."

Harry smiled. Draco wondered if he might kiss him again, but instead he looked up, indicating the banner. "What does the poem mean?"

Draco looked up at the banner then back at Harry, a small smile curving his mouth. "Really, Harry? You need poetry?"

But Harry was having none of that. "Tell me."

Draco sighed. " _Be not defeated by the rain, Nor let the wind prove your better. Succumb not to the snows of winter. Nor be bested by the heat of summer._ "

"Ah, I see," Harry said. "It's about surviving."

"No, Potter," Draco sighed, "it's about winning." He was teasing but the words caused Harry to shift, his face becoming serious.

"Draco, I need you to listen to me for a minute."

Draco sighed and turned his head away, looking to the ceiling. For a moment there it had almost been as though they had connected and now reality was creeping in yet again.

"The word is that the cauldron didn't come here by accident. There's a ritual planned, most likely on the equinox. Nagai told me…"

" _Shunki kōrei-sai_ ," Draco said quietly. "A day to honour ancestors, followed by the flower viewing festivals. It's tomorrow, I know."

"There's a ritual," Potter said. "If they've gone to all the trouble of bringing the cauldron here then it just makes sense that they're going to…"

"They're Muggles!" Draco couldn't help but point out. "They couldn't so much as manage a summoning charm never mind perform a centuries-old Celtic ritual!"

Harry was silent for a long time.

"I think I understand now," he said eventually, voice barely above a whisper. "Why you feel like you owe them so much."

Draco laughed tiredly. "I do owe them. Look, if it's tomorrow can't you just wait till they've sold it?"

"You're certain they're going to sell it?"

Draco wasn't, not anymore.

"I'm going to stop asking you to help me, though," Harry said. "In case I'm wrong – you shouldn't burn your bridges.

"Oh, what does it matter to you?" Draco snapped, the moment lost. "Everything I said before stands – in the end, when this is over, you're going home and I'm staying here."

"You don't have to," Harry said. "Maybe I could…" His voice trailed off.

Draco hissed out a long breath. There it was, what he'd wanted for years all at once within his grasp. And to cap it all, there was Harry looking at him not with the cold curiosity Draco had seen the day he'd taken that Portkey to a new life, but instead with something molten and alive. Draco didn't dare trust it.

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Draco warned him.

Harry smiled the Auror smile Draco had seen before. "I never do."

"And not because we fucked, either," Draco added.

The smile turned wolfish "Well, we've certainly done that…"

"I'm serious, Potter." At that, Harry stilled. "I don't even know if I want to go back."

Harry looked at him in shock. "You can't mean that."

Memories assaulted him. Not the summer days at the Manor as a child, not the rush of riding a broom, not the touch of his Mother's hand. Draco thought of those sometimes but what came to him now were remembered shouts of _Death Eater scum!_ , the terrible snap of his wand, the Ministry institutionally rubbing salt into the wounds of those left behind. "I do mean it," he said and that was at least half true.

Harry shook his head. "No, you miss this too much." And with his wand suddenly appearing from nowhere, Harry cast " _Rictusempra_!"

Harry had used the perpetual tickling spell on Draco once before, all the way back in second year when they had been firing jinxes at one another as Lockhart watched. Then, it had been intended to distract him.

This version though, was softer, much more controlled. The swell of magic rose in the room and Draco felt less like he was being tickled and much more like he was being caressed slowly, hands moving over his body from throat to feet. He gasped, his body jerking slightly as the sensation of being stroked all over mingled with the unbearable sweetness of magic singing in the air. Draco's breath stuttered, his body arching, the sharp delight of it nearly overwhelming him. And then it was gone, replaced with Harry, the power and the strength of him above Draco, kissing him senseless.

"Merlin, why are you so beautiful?" Harry whispered, and then there was no talking for a long while.

 

***

 

Draco watched as Harry straightened up the room with two flicks of a wand. He showered quickly and dressed in his usual black and black and black clothes, conscious of pulling them about him like armour.

Harry had been poking around in the kitchen and when Draco came through he smiled softly, handing him a mug of pitifully weak coffee. Draco stared at it for a moment then looked at Harry again. He had no idea what to do.

I could have this, Draco thought wildly for a moment. I could wake up every day to find him next to me or in the kitchen. He was already desperate to save me even before last night. How much more would it take?

Except…

"England and magic," Draco said, turning the coffee cup around in his hands, his eyes on the liquid caressing the rim. "And all I have to do is hand over everyone who helped me for the last ten years."

Harry sighed. "Draco, I told you I won't ask for your help again. But if they've done something illegal then they need to be stopped and if you don't get out of the way I won't be able to help you."

Draco's eyes darted to meet Harry's. "So I should do nothing?" He'd done that once before, could Potter really not see why he couldn't do it again?

The look of the Auror was back on Harry's face. "This isn't some trivial theft, this is… This is something only a new Dark Lord would want. You understand that, don't you?"

Draco sipped his coffee. "We did cover the part where they're Muggles?"

"They are. You're not."

The implications took a moment to sink in; then all at once Draco reared back.

Potter – and he was Potter again now – didn't hesitate. He reached out to catch hold of Draco's upper arms, backing him against the fridge so that he couldn't break away.

"Let go!" Draco demanded; Potter ignored him.

"I know it's not you."

"Big of you!" Draco iced.

"That first night," Potter shook his head, "yes, I was afraid all this might be your way of making a play for power…"

"You thought _what_?"

"But," Potter went on forcefully, "I realised quickly that you didn't know, which means they must have someone else doing the ritual. Draco, listen to me," but Draco didn't want to, was fighting Potter right up until he said, "listen to me, they can _steal your magic._ "

That brought Draco up short; he looked at Potter in horror.

Finally convinced that Draco wasn't going to try to pull away again, Potter relaxed his grip. "The cauldron does many things. It can bring people back to life, it can be used for transfigurations of all kinds, and it can be used in rituals to do all sorts of things."

"I don't understand," Draco whispered, his head spinning.

Potter ploughed on, utterly remorseless, "The ritual – I think I've worked out where they're going to perform it. He took you to that temple the other day, Kiyomizudera. It means Temple of Pure Water, doesn't it? You must know the story of the cauldron – do you think that's a coincidence?" Draco raised his hands to try and block out what Potter was saying but he just _kept talking_. "Pure water and your blood and they can bring their ancestors back to life! Or how about this one," Potter went on, relentless and ruthless, breaking the suspect under interrogation. "They can bleed you out and make themselves wizards with your precious pure blood! How about that?"

" _Enough_!" Draco shouted. "For fuck's sake, Potter, stop acting like you have my best interests at heart here, all right?"

"Draco," Harry began but Draco couldn't take it anymore.

"Just stop. I don't… Just stop," Draco said and then he was shoving Harry away with a strength he hadn't known he possessed, grabbing his leather jacket on the way out the door as Potter stood stupidly in his tiny kitchen watching him go.

 

***

 

Draco walked along the riverbank, trying to clear his head. Potter's face, his words, the fact that he'd actually thought it might have been Draco all along.

But he doesn't think it now, Draco reminded himself. And there was a time when he would have been right to wonder.

Draco pushed his hands into his pockets, huddling into himself. His left hand encountered cold metal – oh. Quite by instinct he had picked up his emergency escape jacket. In one pocket, a gun. In the other, a gift from a client who hadn't really understood what it did. It looked like a jade dragon, which was why it had been given to him and Draco had nearly laughed at what the idiot was handing him.

All right, Draco thought. Here I am.

Headquarters was only another ten minutes away; it didn't take him even that long.

"Hey, Dragon," Sugawara said, grinning. "Didn’t know the boss was expecting you. Heard you got fucking hard core – sliced yourself up just for talking back to him! No one thought you had it in you!"

Draco looked at him, wondering if that were true. Wondering if it wasn't just Sugawara's chosen turn of phrase, wondering if they really saw him as nothing more than a pussy boy.

Draco had been a coward for many years, when it counted. He'd been afraid to kill Dumbledore, afraid to help Potter, afraid to pick a side during the battle at Hogwarts. Afraid for damned good reasons, but still, always afraid.

He was afraid again now. Afraid he had miscalculated.

"Yeah, well. He didn't ask for me but I just need a minute," Draco said, trying to use his body language to indicate that what he had to say was terribly urgent.

Sugawara raised his hand. "Not right now, Dragon-Yama. Not even for you."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Why on earth not?"

Sugawara's poker face was legendary. "Personal matter."

"Ah," Draco nodded. "Another _miai_ for Rin perhaps? A few more prospective husbands for her to look at?"

If Sugawara knew what Draco was getting at, his face didn't show it. "Actually, I think a decision may have been made there."

"Really?" Draco said, grin sharp as a knife. Sugawara frowned and looked as though he might ask a question but just then the door opened and Oyabun peered out.

"Dragon!" He was all smiles again today. "Come in, come in. How are you feeling today?"

Draco raised his left hand as he stepped into the room, leaving Sugawara frowning at him from the doorway. "Healing nicely, Father. But it seems I may have a problem."

"And what is that, Dragon?"

"The Auror, Potter," Draco said as casually as he could. "I'm afraid he's a little too interested in me."

Oyabun tensed just minutely. "Oh?"

Draco dipped his head. "He was very surprised to find someone he recognised here. He wants to catch up, spend time together, so on and so forth. I am happy to do it, of course, if it keeps him distracted from whatever is really going on, but I am concerned about his interference. He's a powerful wizard."

Oyabun nodded slowly. "And you think it would be best if you were to spend more time with him?"

"It seems as though it could be a good distraction," Draco said.

"But who would be the one distracted?" said a voice. "You or him?"

Draco wasn't surprised. He'd already worked it out. "Nagai-san," he said, turning. "How delightful to see you again. You must be the prospective son-in-law I've heard so much about."

Nagai's head came up – he hadn't expected that.

"The cauldron was a gift at a _miai_ ," Draco said. "So it was from someone who wanted to marry Rin. Most people don't bother with anything more than a bottle of sake, not at a first meeting," he went on, turning back to Oyabun. "So it was someone who was determined to persuade you, which meant it was someone you might object to. The gift was designed to show you the power of magic, so it was a wizard. But I think it was cinched when Potter told me that no one had put him in touch with the Japanese Aurors. And who was his Diet contact?"

Oyabun smiled. "You're very smart, Dragon. You always were. But, you know, you've always been a wild card."

Draco smiled. "I've been the nail that sticks out."

"And you know what happens to such a nail," Nagai said, raising his wand.

There it was. Decision made.

"It gets hammered down," Draco acknowledged before he reached into his pocket and flicked the head of the dragon away from its body. There was a sharp pull below his navel, and as the world distorted and the room disappeared, Nagai's shouting rang in his ears though Draco never took his eyes away from Oyabun.

 

***

 

 _Thud._

Draco sprawled across the ground, winded. When he caught his breath he took stock; he was at Arashiyama, outside the city limits of Kyoto. The dragon between his fingers seemed to grin at him as he looked at it and Draco smiled grimly back at it before dumping it into his pocket. It was a useful tool when one needed a quick escape, but there was no controlling where it would take you as Draco had discovered the first time he'd used it.

Perhaps it had been foolish to go to Oyabun when he had not been certain. It would have been safer by far simply to empty his bank account and run, asking no questions.

But if he had, it would all have been for nothing. The last ten years, the times Draco had felt like screaming before he'd managed to accumulate all the things he'd thought he'd never have again: money in the bank, respect, even friends. Cool Yoshida, gentle Sadahiro, fiery Sugawara - he would never had thought of Muggle thugs as friends before. If he'd run then he would have allowed himself to be defeated not by the rain, not by the inevitability of hardship and change, but by the mere threat of it.

If he left now, at least he knew for certain.

Potter's face flashed before his eyes. Draco stamped down on it. He'd left his family before, his mother, all his friends…

 _You were forced. This time it will be your choice._

Draco shook his head. He would survive, that's what was important. He would survive.

 _He_ would, but -

 _What will they do now? If they don't have you, will they give up? Will they just forget about this ritual when everything's in place?_

Harry. He'd said _your pure blood_ but what if he'd been wrong?

Draco tried to banish the images assaulting his mind but they were coming too fast. Harry across the room, in the middle of a meeting and unable to look away from Draco. Harry beating down the door and pinning Draco to the floor when he answered. Harry on his back with that unguarded look in his eyes, as vulnerable and open as Draco could ever have wished him to be. Harry dying as his blood poured into the cauldron.

Draco snarled in the back of his throat and before he knew what he was doing he was running back into the city. There was only one place to go.

 

***

 

It was dark by the time Draco reached Kiyomizudera. At least he knew exactly where he was going this time, and he ran through up the steps and through the gate. He forced himself to slow down in case he encountered any guards and sneaked through the temple itself, along the great stage to stare down at the waterfall below.

The gloom of twilight was pierced here and there by torches normally lit only on the highest feast days. Draco's heart raced as he took in Oyabun's family standing to the right, his younger children missing, but Rin standing there with her brother Keishi. They both looked a little bored, dressed for a night in a club. Rin was fiddling with her mobile phone. Around them, the kyodai in their uniform. They most likely all had guns.

To the other side, another set of guards with their kimono bearing a different emblem – Nagai's men no doubt, probably all with wands.

The cauldron had been placed carefully beneath the centre channel of water, supposedly the water of wisdom. It was almost full already though the water seemed to be flowing oddly; Draco squinted and could just make out that they had attached a hook to the stone channel through which the water flowed.

And then from the forest off to the side came the generals of the army; Oyabun in his finest kimono, Yoshida and Sugawara flanking him. Nagai walked behind, and _oh_ , Draco's heart tightened, there was Potter, unconscious and being levitated in the centre of them all. The group approached the waterfall and with a swish and flick, Nagai brought Potter up and attached him upside down to the hook above the pool.

Draco placed his back against the railing, looking away from the scene below as his mind raced. What would happen next was obvious: they would bleed Potter into the cauldron unless Draco did something to prevent it. How, he asked himself, am I supposed to fight them all?

"Dragon!" A shout caught his attention. "Dragon, what are you doing up there? You planning to jump?"

Draco closed his eyes slowly, allowing himself a moment's regret at the lost element of surprise. Then he stood, defiant.

They were all looking at him now as he leaned over the railing but his eyes were only for Oyabun. "But of course, Father," Draco said with a smile. "I hear that if you survive, your dearest wish will be granted."

Oyabun laughed, though the others all remained stone-faced. "Ah, that old story!" he said, shaking his head. "It's more than forty feet, you know, Dragon. You'd break something for sure. Why don't you come down the steps like a civilized person?"

Draco's eyes narrowed.

"You must have worked it out, after all," Oyabun went on. "Nagai had no right to threaten you like that – I understood why you ran. I'm glad you came back. Truly."

"I'll come down," Draco answered. He made for the steps, Oyabun's words pounding through him.

At the bottom he looked around. Nagai's face was furious, but the others all looked as they ever had. Yoshida nodded at him, Sugawara shrugged and rolled his eyes.

"Hi, Dragon," Rin simpered and Draco sighed.

"Rin-chan," he said, turning back to Oyabun. "You are right, Father, I did misunderstand."

"I thought as much," Oyabun nodded. "And I am hurt that you would have so little faith in your family."

"It was very wrong of me, Father," Draco acknowledged, bowing deep. "I beg you would pardon this weakness."

"See, Nagai?" Oyabun said triumphantly. "He's Yakuza through and through. And you thought he'd turn on us for the sake of the people who exiled him?"

"Foreigners are foreigners," Nagai said. "They are not family."

Draco smiled. "Ah, racism. I was never on the receiving end before I came to Japan. It certainly changes your perspective."

Oyabun laughed and Draco took the opportunity to dart a look towards Potter. He was totally immobilised but conscious, his eyes meeting Draco's. Draco furiously tried to communicate what he was thinking but had no idea if he'd managed it before Oyabun started to speak again and Draco was forced to look away.

"Dragon, never change!" Oyabun said. "But really we will have to talk at the celebration afterwards - I think you know what I will ask of you now?"

Draco's gaze darted from Potter to Nagai to Oyabun. "I thought that you would kill me for this. I did not understand then but I understand now, Father: I am not to die. Rather you would have me kill Potter."

"Precisely," Nagai said, stepping forward with a _tanto_ in his hand. "Take this knife, and cut his throat."

 

***

 

Abruptly, Draco remembered being sixteen. Sixteen and scared. Sixteen and crying, then bleeding, then scarred because of Potter. Hating him so fiercely he thought he might incinerate from the strength of it and hating everyone around him: Weasley for having his attention; Granger for making him seem smarter than he was; Dumbledore for tearing the Slytherins down just to build Potter up.

He'd hated Dumbledore the most because he was supposed to be their teacher. But he still hadn't been able to cast the spell that trembled on his tongue.

He wondered if cutting a throat would be easier.

 

***

 

Draco took the knife with fingers that did not tremble. Yoshida hissed and Sugawara gave a joyous shout. "Told you he wouldn't pussy out when it counted!"

Draco risked a glance at the two of them. "Your faith is inspiring, Yoshida," he said dryly.

Yoshida's face was troubled but his voice was calm as ever when he said, "You told me once that you would never be able to kill."

Draco shrugged. "And if it was anyone else that would probably be true." He turned to Potter. "But this is the person who took everything away from me. I think he thought I'd change my mind if he let me fuck him," indrawn breath from Oyabun at that, "but it didn't." Draco looked back to his left. "Satisfied, Nagai-san?"

Nagai's mouth was hanging open but he nodded sharply. "You see why I suspected?"

"Of course," Draco said, turning away from him to prowl towards Potter hanging upside down. "But you were wrong to suspect."

"I did what I could for you," Draco said in English this time, watching Potter's face. "I didn't tell my father it was you at our house when it would have meant your death. I didn't let Crabbe kill you even after you took my wand. My _wand_ , Potter!" Draco rounded on him, shouting, and watched his eyes dart to his belt.

Draco whirled back to Nagai. "You took his wand, of course?"

"Of course," Nagai affirmed.

Draco smiled. "I wonder if I might… There's a spell he used on me once." A flick of the knife and Draco's shirt fell open. "Where you see the scar. Potter sliced me open and left me to bleed to death. We were sixteen."

Yoshida nodded. "I asked Dragon about the scar when first we went for a tattoo. I remember he told me of this."

Oyabun grinned. "I see. Yes, I do see. Very poetic, Dragon. Nagai, give him the wand."

"But what if his magic attracts attention as you have said?" Nagai objected.

Oyabun raise an eyebrow. "By the time they can get here, we will all be wizards." Nagai looked as though he would say more, but at Oyabun's mild, "You would disobey?" Draco found the wand in his hand. He tucked the knife into his belt.

" _Sectumsempra_ , wasn't that the incantation," Draco mused as he stepped into the pool, the icy bite of the water crawling up his shins. "It's been so long since I used magic that I might take your head clean off. Still, this will all be over soon," he said, raising the wand.

And then, dropping further into the icy water Draco shouted, " _Expelliarmus!_ "

Nagai roared as his wand flew out of his hand and into Draco's who was already turning back to Potter to cry, " _Finite Incantatem!_ " Potter at once started to fall towards the pool and Draco sprinted to catch him even as the kyodai pulled their guns and the Shugenja pulled their wands.

Draco had underestimated Potter, though, who had managed to flip his body around and land on his feet. In a moment, he had caught the wand Draco threw to him and then, " _Protego!_ " just as the shooting started, bullets bouncing off the shield just like the jinxes.

"I'll give you this," Draco shouted over the pounding of gunfire. "You cast a pretty mean defensive spell."

"Did you have to tell them that we fucked?" Potter demanded, as he directed jet after jet of red light out through the shield.

"Everything I said and _that's_ what upset you? _Stupefy!_ " he cried as a wizard tried to circle around them.

"We're definitely going to have to have a talk - _Stupefy!_ \- about what is and isn't appropriate - _Immobulus!_ \- to say to a suspect - _Petrificus Totalis!_ "

" _Protego_ ," Draco yelled as a bullet made it through the shield, embedding itself into the stone behind them. "Don't you have any cavalry coming?"

"Don't you have an escape plan?" Potter countered.

" _Stupefy!_ " Draco gasped. "I've got a sort of Portkey – it just fires you somewhere though, you can't control it."

"Where did that come from?"

"For Merlin's sake, Potter - _Stupefy!_ \- I work in the magical black market!"

"Well, if they don't-"

But then all around the air was filled with the cracks of Apparition and a veritable army of red robes filled the shrine site. A dozen or so voices calling " _Expelliarmus!_ " was followed immediately by rapid Japanese demanding surrender, and the kyodai all dropping their weapons.

"You can come out now, Harry," came a voice that could only be Ronald Weasley, and sure enough there he was, all in Auror robes.

"We survived!" Draco breathed. He hadn't quite believed that he would and now, now it was all over.

And then Harry took his hand. "We survived."

 

***

 

"All right, Ron?" Potter called as he stood up, his clothes soaked through.

"All right, Harry," Weasley said. "Bloody hell – is that Malfoy with you?"

Draco saluted mockingly. "Weasley. Should have known that Potter wouldn't move without you. You been here all the time?"

"Nah," Weasley said. "He only called us in this morning. By the time we got here, he wasn't where he was supposed to be – no big shock though. Forever getting himself captured, this one."

"My confidence in the Aurors is at an all-time high," Draco drawled and grinned when Potter scowled at him.

"Oh, I dunno," Weasley went on blithely. "He found you quick enough. Jumped at the chance to get to Japan, he did, and I knew it was at least partly because he wanted to see what had happened to you."

Draco turned to Potter, who had gone bright red. "Oh you did, did you, Potter?"

"Er," he said, and Draco felt the mild smugness transform into something softer.

"Come here," he said, and pulled Harry into a gentle kiss.

There was a strangled sound from Weasley. "…I didn't actually think _that_ was why," he muttered.

Harry let Draco kiss him for just a moment before he pulled away. "What?" Draco frowned.

Harry shook his head. "Later." He pulled Draco towards to the edge of the pool and they both hauled themselves out as the Aurors rounded up the suspects.

"So, the Yakuza working with some of the Magical Diet," Weasley said, looking at Nagai. "What's the story here?"

"Oh," Draco said, "Let me. I believe I worked this out much faster than the trained Auror here. May I?"

Taking Weasley's bemused look for encouragement, Draco turned to Harry. "You never did learn to do your own homework, did you, Potter?" he said with an arched eyebrow.

"Yes, all right, all right," Harry groused. "The point if you please, Draco."

Draco grinned. "I believe I mentioned that Japan has a shortage of wizards. Though this is really a love story - Nagai here was desperate to impress the lovely Rin," he nodded to the girl who simpered slightly at even that little attention. "Who, I'll grant you, is very pretty but is also shallow and utterly spoiled." Ignoring the girl's shout of protest, Draco went on, "Still, this is a traditional family so Nagai's best shot was to get her father onside. So when he heard about the _Coire_ \- how was it you did hear, by the way?"

Nagai did not answer, merely glowered.

"Well, anyway: he heard and he arranged to bring it here, probably with the support of at least some of the Diet – this shrinking population business isn't getting any better you know. So he brings it here. Job well done even though his mind is stuck on the girl who won't give him the time of day. Then, light bulb! Since Japan needs more wizards, what better way to impress your prospective bride and her family than by giving them the chance to become magical."

Harry shook his head. "Yes, thank you, I had managed to work most of that out. I just thought they intended for you to provide the blood."

"No," Draco said, looking sadly at Oyabun, Yoshida and Sugawara, all of whom were looking at him with fury in their eyes. "No, any wizard would do I think. They weren't going to kill me." They wanted you to become a murderer, Draco reminded himself sternly. They betrayed you, first.

"Cauldron, criminals – good haul," Harry was nodding. "Though this is going to be one hell of an international incident."

"Oh, I don't know," said one of the men in Auror robes, stepping forward. "Seems like this is a fine example of mutual cooperation preventing murder and corruption."

The perfect English belied the familiar Japanese face and Draco's jaw dropped. " _Sadahiro_?" he blurted.

Sadahiro smiled. "A pleasure, Mr Malfoy. I must say, being your chauffeur was certainly more interesting than a lot of assignments I could potentially have landed for my first year's surveillance."

Draco couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. "Are you seriously telling me that…"

"Do you really think," Sadahiro said, voice taut, "that we just let foreign criminals run around our country helping to run black market operations?" Draco's mouth snapped shut. "We've known about all this for years, but it's been helping to keep cash flowing in the magical community so we've let it go. But now…" Sadahiro sighed. "Auror Potter, the exile Draco Malfoy is under arrest for crimes against the magical people of Japan."

Draco's blood ran cold.

"But he stopped the ritual!" Harry blurted out. "He prevented this crime."

"And for his part in assisting this _mutual cooperation_ ," Sadahiro stressed, "we will extradite him back to Britain as soon as he is ready to go." He turned to Draco and bowed. "It was an honour, Dragon-Yama," he said and then he was gone.

 

***

 

Afterwards, after the whole mess had been brought in to Aurors much more senior than Sadahiro, after the subject of Nagai's guilt had been debated back and forward, after the question of how to handle what had been handed over to the Japanese authorities, Draco stood at the top of the stage looking down once again. His fingers itched for a cigarette, but smoking on temple grounds was strictly forbidden and some rules had been reinforced too often to be broken easily.

"Still thinking of jumping?" Harry asked from behind him. "You get a wish, if I recall."

Draco nodded to himself. "I wasn't sure when I spoke if you could understand," he said, turning.

Harry turned his head and pulled back his ear. A blue gem glowed in the hollow between earlobe and neck, the small brother of the gem Draco had seen that first night. "Translation gem."

Draco sighed. "What I said-"

"About me scarring you and you resenting me." Harry shrugged. "Not like I didn't know that's how you felt."

"It was," Draco said suddenly. "It really was, but…" His voice trailed off. He wondered if he'd gone too far in the heat of the moment, if Harry would think that was how he still felt.

He opened his mouth, but Harry had already started talking about something else. "The Unspeakables contacted the Auror office, apparently." He chuckled. "Told us to pick you up while we were here for using an illegal wand, breaching the terms of your probation."

Draco turned back to gaze over the edge of the stage, his fingers tightening. "Try to do the right thing, get sent to prison. Try to do the wrong thing, get sent to prison. Try to survive, get sent to prison. That's my life in a nutshell."

"Yeah, well, quite apart from the fact that the Head Auror is on record as saying you did it to save his life," Harry said with a small smile in his voice, "it raised a question of how they knew. Turns out there's this campaigner in the Wizengamot, very big on privacy laws. Also seems she knew that you'd been using magic to save my life. She felt obliged to go public with it all. Seems some of the laws there might be changed."

Draco felt a smile tugging up the corners of his mouth. "She, you say?"

Harry's hand curled around the nape of Draco's neck. "Well, Ron has influence in that area. She's his wife, after all."

Draco leaned into the touch. "Guess I really am coming back to Britain, then." Mother, Father, Pansy, Greg, the Manor – it was too much to take in. All the possibilities floated before him. The life he'd meant to have.

"Would you rather stay?" Harry asked, his arm tightening, pulling Draco into a half-hug.

"I don't think that's an option anymore," he replied, a little relieved but mostly saddened. He turned, moving closer to Harry's body. "They're going to obliviate the Family, aren't they?"

"Probably," Harry nodded. He held Draco for a moment, in silence.

"I'm not who I thought I was," Draco blurted out all at once. "I betrayed them. I didn't want to, but I couldn't kill you, I couldn't possibly kill you and I just…"

"Shh," Harry breathed, kissing Draco's face gently, lips and cheeks and forehead. "I know. I know you didn't want to, I know."

Harry held Draco for a long time. He only cried a little, but he did cry, for the life he'd tried to make, for his failures and his weaknesses, for the truth. He hadn't cried in years – since right around the time Harry had seen him cry before, when he had been unable to imagine anything more humiliating. But now with Harry whispering to him that he was sorry, that Draco had to know he was a good person – it was cathartic.

At last Draco was soothed. Harry held him against his shoulder, gently stroking his blond hair.

"I know you wish you hadn't had to make a choice," Harry said softly into his ear. "But the thing is, that you made that leap tonight. Right off this stage: I saw you. And so you deserve your wish. Whatever it is."

Draco's mouth curved unwillingly against Harry's throat. "Poetry and now this, Potter?"

"Draco," Harry said, half-sternly. "It's going to be all right."

Draco brought his hand up to rest his fingers in the dip of Harry's collarbone. "And what if I've become so greedy," he said softly, not quite able to meet Harry's eyes, "that I want something more than the chance to go home. If I want all of that and something else as well?"

Harry reached out with his free hand and kissed Draco's fingers. "I want it too," he said quietly. "So when you come home, come with me."

Draco closed his eyes for a moment, letting Harry's words sink in, take root. Suddenly he found himself shaking his head, laughing a little as he stepped back to look at Harry's face. "This is mad! It's been what, three days? We haven't had any of the right conversations, we haven't…"

"It's just another leap," Harry said. "And besides," he hesitated, then met Draco's gaze and forced out his own hard-to-say declaration, "I want to know you."

And then Harry was kissing him, fingers in his hair, the words unnecessary because Draco _knew_ exactly what Harry felt and what he was asking. And for his part, Draco clutched on to him, undefeated by the rain or the elements, undefeated by anything at all. He had survived, scarred but strong, and this time when he leapt, Harry's hand would be in his.

 

雨ニモマケズ

Be not defeated by the rain, Nor let the wind prove your better.  
Succumb not to the snows of winter. Nor be bested by the heat of summer.

Be strong in body. Unfettered by desire. Not enticed to anger. Cultivate a quiet joy.  
Count yourself last in everything. Put others before you.  
Watch well and listen closely. Hold the learned lessons dear.

In times of drought, shed tears of sympathy.  
In summers cold, walk in concern and empathy.

Stand aloof of the unknowing masses:  
Better dismissed as useless than flattered as a "Great Man".

This is my goal, the person I strive to become.  
-Kenji Miyazawa, translated by David Sulz


End file.
